Fear and Grace

It seems that there are layers upon layers of fear in my path toward enlightenment. I've grown through so many fears and doubts and processing each layer of fear has been such a huge gift. It's a bit like Grace is the sweet gooey center wrapped in a gob stopper of fear.

My process has gone something like this:

1. I notice that I'm fearful or doubtful about something.
2. I quietly connect with my guides.
3. I name the fear and ask whether it is better to transform it or embrace it.
4. I quietly sense the answer and then ask the guides to help me with whichever action was recommended.

Transform It - I transform fear by asking my guides to help me shift it into my heart. I then use my hands to energetically pull the fear from my gut to my heart. Once the fear is in my heart I appreciate my self in as deep a way possible, so that the electromagnetic frequency of my heart will be in the "coherent - positive emotion" range and this shifts my entire vibration to loving coherence from fearful incoherence.

Embrace It - I embrace my fear by wallowing in it for a bit. I choose to amplify and exagerate the feeling so that I can explore it and understand it. This can take several hours or even a few days. It's scary because once I surrender and dive into my fear I feel like it will consume me completely. But here's the really interesting thing... somewhere in the pits of my own despair I find Grace. I find love, light, and healing down in the darkness.

It is this Grace, this sweetness that I long for at all times. This is what drives me to continue to grow and learn. This is what drives me to be deeply present to my fear, my doubt, my anger, or whatever negative emotional experience might come up in the course of every day living. In some ways I think of myself as a warrior, ever on the quest for a new deamon to slay so that I can revel in the healing and release.

Now that I've intellectualized about my fear (thereby Avoiding processing it) for a few paragraphs. Let me begin to embrace my fear by exposing some of it here.

For three consecutive full moons, I spent 3 evenings feeling wakeful and deeply connected with the Divine Mother, Gaia. During these times I had the experience of chatting with her and hearing her responses as words in my mind. (I often have an internal dialogue with my spirit guides - Pan, Michael, and others). During these conversations Gaia asked me to do several things for her, which I have done. Those include starting a Facebook group called Gaia Rising, planning and hosting monthly phone dialogues for Gaia Rising, and the like.

These evenings were fun and magical and made me feel very special. But on another level, and from another view, I was experiencing insomnia. After three days with much too little sleep a person looses the ability to do regular daily activities... like driving a car or going to work. Only I was feeling good and I didn't realize that I was lacking in those capacities until after getting a little bit of a scare. Thankfully there were no car wrecks, no one got hurt, no jobs were lost... but it was scary because for a few hours I felt out of control.

It made me feel a little crazy. It made my husband wonder. And that called up for me the biggest wound from my current life. In 1995 I lost my mind. I was 20 and I delved very deeply into the expansion of my consciousness. I invited and experienced a number of psychic gifts including telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc. But I was doing all that in the most unhealthy ways possible. I was not getting enough food, rest, sunshine, or excercise and I was experimenting with substances which altered my biochemistry. For a period of several months I was really confused and unhealthy. For some of those months I was totally flipping mad. I was insane.

Thank Goddess for my parents who put me in a hospital and got me the help I needed. And thank Goddess for the nurse at the hospital who told me that they weren't interested in changing my spirituallity, they just wanted to make sure that I could take care of my basic needs - like food, shelter, clothing, and interacting with regular people in a regular way. And thank Goddess that I told my husband all about this on our very first date and he fell in love with me anyway.

But ever since then I've had a quantum entanglement between spirituality and sanity. I have predicted plane crashes, heard people's thoughts as if they were speaking outloud, and seen beyond that which is considered ordinary. And I've always wanted to possess these abilities... but for some unfortunate reason on several occassions when my psychic abilities have expanded, it has resulted in my appearing to be, temporarily, completely batty.

With the exception of about 5 hours, I've felt solidly sane for the past 15 years. Yet the scar tissue is immensely out of proportion. While I'm certain that I'm sane, I am fearful that additional spiritual growth might result in me appearing to be temporarily insane again. It puts me right to the place of WHAT IFs. What if I really am crazy? What if I lose everything I care about? What if I lose my job and my family and become homeless and smelly?

And then the other side of me weighs in:

How did you imagine this would look? You believe that all people can expand their consciousness and develop higher sense perception. You have invited this exploration into your life, since childhood. You've spent your entire life experimenting with your consciousness. Your favorite conversations are made of these very topics. Which would be scarier? Waking up to realize that we're all growing these abilities, or waking up and realizing that there is no magic at all?

And with no true sense of resolution I prepare to publish this blog post. I notice that it is scary to be authentic and vulnerable. Yet I press 'publish' with deep trust that my guides would not steer me astray by encouraging me to show this aspect of myself to you.

Letter from Gaia ~ A Poem by Kate Rose Bast

Letter from Gaia

In your living spaces, watch
for the mirror of movements
of global breadth. Respond

as if every small movement
of twig or feather
mattered to every being.

This is the way of all my moving:
all effects and constructs,
all destructs and rebuilds:
ant hill, turtle egg,
avalanche.

And what will you birth?
For you, I will open
my deep chasms of fire
and microbial pools, groan
my mothering womb
chorus of species
song to bring the you
of all you are
into Be.

Wear green, spring green
thoughts, eat green at every
meal, bleed green blood,
photosynthesize
the green shift of life
into your deepest cell.

Sleep green in and under
green. Feed your eyes
with green. Breathe
the new of green.
Tell others.

By Kate Rose Bast, 2008

Know Thyself

Nosce te Ipsum

The greater your knowledge and appreciation of your Self, the greater the resilience you have in times of change. Knowing my Self has really saved my ass on more than one occassion. I reckon that the guy who got rich writing "Chicken Soup for the Soul" was just taking excerpts from his own journal... that those were all pieces of advice he'd picked given himself for how be more successful living his life. Or that guy who wrote "Conversations with God," wasn't he also getting to know himself in the presence of God and the reader?

That's probably the appeal for blogging and tweeting and the like. Who doesn't enjoy talking to them Self? And why not learn things in the presence of others? Martin Buber's philosophy was that God only exists between I and thou. According to him, there is no divine if there is no unfolding relationship. So why not have a super healthy relationship with your Self? And if you believe that we are all ONE, then there are billions of different faces of your Self. Like a kaliedescopic funhouse mirror. "I am you and you are me and we are we, come together right now, over me!"

Today I feel compelled to try and distill all the most valuable things I've learned into 5 or less points. The truth of the matter is I'm doing it just for me. I don't think it's selfish to be Self serving on occassion. Especially if you're the kind of person who cares deeply about others and spends lots of time trying to serve and support others.

1. My experience and emotions change in cycles with the moon and the sun seasons. I like it like that.
2. My roots run deep. If I get plenty of rest, sunshine, fresh veggies, and fresh air then I can handle just about anything.
3. I am vulnerable. Being Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired is feedback which deserves instant self-care. If I'm ever any two of these at the same time I HALT and care for myself.
4. The best way to instantly shift a negative emotional experience is to truly feel care or appreciation for someone or something in my life. Facebook has made that really efficient for me!
5. All bullshit is an opportunity to grow. Dig in and turn the shit around. It all makes great compost! Can't grow without it!

There's another thing that I can't seem to boil down to a pithy little statement. It has to do with being real and trusting other people. There are months in the spring and summer when I feel deeply serene and my capacity to love and care for others is really expansive. In fall I'm feeling a natural contraction and movement inward. And then sometime every winter I feel lousy and fragile. Sometimes I am afraid to admit it because maybe the people who love the leafy green summer tree will think the scraggly winter tree is ugly or even broken. But thankfully I've been through this winter thing 35 times and I've figured out that it is okay to be a real person. Hell, it's better than okay because most of the time the people who love leafy green summer trees can appreciate that seasons change and some of them actually enjoy being able to nurture and support a scraggly and wind blown nekked winter tree!

It takes a village to raise a child. A tree needs the whole universe... earth, wind, sunlight, water, moonlight, gardeners, apple-eaters, aphids, worms, termites, owls, bullshit, and even a LOGGER and a CARPENTER now and then!

No More Bricks in the Wall

Lastnight I wrote about some of my growing pains and I finished the entry with these words:

In love I pull out the bricks and begin to build a new wall
In fear I restrict that which seeks to grow through me
And something inside of me dies.

I'm happy to report that moments after writing that my beloved and I had a long and loving conversation. Without betraying him or the moment, let me simply say that he is showing up in our relationship in an entirely new, healthy, and beautiful way.

He dismantles walls and shows each brick
We examine them together
He scapes a beautiful garden wall
We compost and gently turn the soil
And trust that LOVE grows on.

Growing Pains

The more I grow and learn, the more I notice patterns. Today one is really fresh for me. I have long feared that I would grow into something that my family would be unable to love. I suppose in some ways that has already happened at least once.

When I was in my early teens, my parents seemed a little bit akward around the church ladies who would come by and invite them to church. Sure, my parents bought me a bible and paid my way to church camp... it just wasn't their thing. They may have even been relieved when I dropped it at age 16. But then in my phase of deep existential exploration they seemed equally uneasy. I recall one time when I was about 19 and there was some big cult expose' in Texas. I was chatting with my mom about it on the phone and she was asking me odd questions. As if she had a brochure in hand entitled "10 Easy Ways to Tell if your Teen is Trapped in a Freaky Death Cult." I called her on it and she admitted that she was a little worried about me. I thought my response was pretty funny, "Come on mom, you should be more worried about me starting a cult than joining one!" She didn't find it humerous at all.

At some point I learned that my spirituality and my environmental philosophy were simply not to be discussed with my parents. I don't recall that they ever came right out and told me to omit these parts of my self, or whether it was just painfully obvious to me in other ways.

I played along out of respect, love, and a desire to keep the peace. But I was really challenged and felt broken. The problem is that if you try to be a whole person, but you can't be your whole self with certain people, there are walls created within yourself. Sure, I chose to build them... but after a while there were parts of my soul which felt like step children, or East Berliners.

It was not okay to be a witch. It was not okay to be radical or outspoken about anything. It was not okay to think deep thoughts or practice developing higher sense perception. And you gotta know that I was always very open and honest with my parents until that point. So the shift was painful. I didn't know who to be when I was with them, so I just didn't show up there any more; for several years.

It is clear to me that they love me deeply and that they didn't want to hear the things that amplified their worries. But as I drifted further away they worried even more. And I'm highly perceptive, when someone I love is worrying about me I can feel it across space and time.

Well, okay, so I can't be me with my parents. And I can't be my whole self at work. I've always tried to be my whole self with friends, but most of the time I was lucky if I could find one person with which I could be whole, for a few hours or on and off for a few months. And even that was iffy and problematic. I reckon that I'm not alone in this phenomenon. I reckon that there are other people who are perpetually veiwed as weirdos by EVERYONE they know...

And then I met my beloved, and for the first time in my life I could be my whole self. He didn't always agree with my views and theories, but he didn't write me off as crazy either. I really like the fact that we don't agree on everything, it makes for a much interesting conversation. To me the most important factor in falling in love with him was the fact that we could have really DEEP conversations and I could be WHOLE at last.

But I still carry this scar tissue around, this fear that I'll out-grow friends and loved ones. That people who love and understand me now will one day say, "Wow, she really has become a freakin weirdo!"

Because, from time to time, even my beloved gets freaked out by things I do, say, and experience. Every once in a while we pass through a phase where he is uncomfortable with who I am becoming. Conceptually we have discussed what I envision for myself. We've discussed it many times. But discussing abstract concepts of the future and then living through deep learning events are two totally different things.

I live as true to my heart as possible. I believe in a higher force and I have spent my life listening for that still small voice which points me in the right direction. I trust that voice because it has never been wrong. EVERYTHING which has occurred has been a gift.

Yet my dedication to this emerging path of mine creates fear in my beloved. And if I still spoke about it to my parents, it would create fear for them as well. My beloved has even recently asked me to not talk with him about certain things, or even with other people when he is in ear shot.

In love I pull out the bricks and begin to build a new wall
In fear I restrict that which seeks to grow through me
And something inside of me dies.

Change ~ Gentle or Chaotic?

Each one of us is narrating our lives by crafting stories to help our self understand what is occurring. Most of us believe our stories until something comes along that doesn't fit in with they way we've constructed our personal reality. In the current era, everything is changing at a dramatic and unprecedented rate. Everytime something in the world around you changes, it bumps up against your story.

Your story that spans your entire life. It includes information like your name, the places you've lived, the jobs you've had, the people you've loved, and the things you've learned. It also includes assessments you've made about your self over the years, as well as judgements others have made about you. For example, "I'm motivated and intelligent." or "I'm sloppy and lazy."

In this time of unprecedented change you have many choices. Perhaps the most important choice is whether or not you plan to learn and grow through these changes. If the answer is yes, the next important question is whether you want your changes to feel gentle or chaotic.

I've personally experimented with both throughout my life. In my experience, chaotic change usually has a much higher magnitude. Chaotic change can afford you to change dozens of things about your self all in one fell swoop. This type of change strikes me as very intense. In my younger years I actually enjoyed that intensity. I loved the quantum leap in consciousness which accompanied learning dozens of things about my self all at once. But there's a dark side too. It wasn't that I was always happily improving my self, like picking out new carpeting in a house that has decent flooring already. It is more like having the electricity turned on, looking around at the house and realizing that it's full of rats, mold, and the floor is rotting and falling through! Quite frankly it is both scary and depressing to notice dozens of things about your self that aren't as healthy as you'd like to believe.

Gentle change, on the other hand, is quite subtle and requires patience and perserverence. In gentle change you walk into that fixer-upper with a flash light, you pick one room of the house, and you notice and accept the fact that there are a few rats. Of course it is a much slower process, but it is not nearly as traumatic when you take each little aspect of your self one step at a time.

You always have a choice in how you approach your learning and growth. The trick is noticing that you have been making these choices your whole life! You have already sub-consciously chosen either gentle change or chaotic change, or some blend of both.

Putting off many life lessons over a long period of time is one way to choose chaotic change. By ignoring opportunities to gently edit your story, the queue of lessons can get mighty large and gang up on you all at once. There are some clues and cues to let you know whether you might be cruising toward a very chaotic and painful wake-up call:

1. If something negative happens and you dive into a distraction (food, drinking, sex, games, drugs) rather than processing the emotion, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.
2. If some corner of your mind is concerned or worried about any of your choices, habits, or routines, but you distract yourself and work hard to ignore it, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.
3. If several people around you are giving you unpleasant feedback and you think they are all full of shit, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.

However, if you periodically stop and notice your emotions, and gently probe into the more unpleasant emotions, you will discover that there are little things about your story which could be edited that would produce entirely different results in your daily life.

I recently noticed that one of my daily activities was triggering a small amount of doubt in a corner of my mind and there was even some feedback coming in from a few other people who also shared this doubt about my choice. This morning while I was waking up I stopped to really consider this activity. I decided that while I really gained much good from this activity, there is no benefit to feeling doubt or experiencing others doubt. This morning I made a small edit to how I conduct that activity. I didn't have to nuke the activity, just shifted the components which were creating doubt. Now I feel much better and I may have even avoided manifesting some loud and painful lesson!

I hope you'll consider the story you are writing for your self each day. I hope you will understand that it is not the distraction or activity which is bad. Only our experience of a thing is good or bad. And doubt is a strong signal that some editing would produce an even better story.

In love and light, Tree

Eyes of the World

Song by the Grateful Dead, Written by Garcia and Hunter

Drawing by Stewart Fuell

Right outisde this lazy summer home

You aint got time to call your soul a critic no.

Right outside the lazy gate of winters summer home,

Wondrin where the nut-thatch winters,

Wings a mile long just carried the bird away.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,

The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.

Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings

But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own.

There comes a redeemer, and he slowly too fades away,

And there follows his wagon behind him that's loaded with clay.

And the seeds that were silent all burst into bloom, and decay,

And night comes so quiet, it's close on the heels of the day.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings,
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own.

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own,

And sometimes we visit your country and live in your home,

Sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone,

Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings,
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own.