Swimming in Expansions; Drowning in Contractions

To experience the quantum field—the eternal sea of consciousness—
is to fall in love with the universe and to know that a
consciousness that is cosmic pervades
every living thing
and
every living being.

~Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

The sacred is experienced as feeling. It is the felt
consciousness of the heart.

To experience the sacred is to experience the
very nature of consciousness itself.

Betty J. Kovács

Wednesday, the 27th, 5:30am 

Hi Nora,

Oh wow. Here I am once again bowled over with what has come into my field. My body is humming with energy flowing through it. Another podcast, this one with a psychologist named Rachel Harris, whose newest book is called Swimming in the Sacred, (what a title!) which features the stories of twelve female elders of the underground psychedelic therapy movement! Wow. Right away they talk about the differences between the men (the interviewer is a man) that are part of this work and the women, and wow again, I only ever want to work with a woman, and even then, not just any woman. I've only listened to ten minutes and already there is so much that has me bursting with excitement. So much buzzing with excitement I'm having a hard time holding it! 

These elders are more like priestesses. They're not therapists but worked on themselves for many years first and continue to, they sit in the ceremony and they maintain the sacred space. To them the plants are sacred and have spirit. They don't think like therapists, they don't think in terms of solving issues, they look for transformation. They work in conjunction with therapists and refer people who want a therapist, but they're not there as a "therapist." They are like spiritual warriors, with their own healing journeys, including with the plant medicines, continuing on and on. They are connected to a network of other people they can call and consult and talk with. 

They find that in many instances with psychedelics, the childhood stuff just falls away. The psychedelic process really can shift the whole story in a way that is not really understood. (This has been my sense in the past few days.) It's like the psychic space gets bigger and the childhood history occupies a smaller space of it. 

(Here is my newest dream/fantasy: that you are somehow with me in the psychedelic session.) 

I'm so eager to read her book! 

Thursday morning~

This morning I meditated for the very first time in years. Not because I told myself I should or it would be good for me, etc., but because I wanted to. I wanted to find some kind of sound that could help me relax and feel into all of this that is new in my life. It was wonderful and I can't wait to do it again! It was a meditation soundscape with rain, singing bowls and binaural beats. Beautiful. 

(I did think about how in the past repeated meditation has brought depression. It seems to me that if that happens, it's a good opportunity to be with that and see where it might want to take me.) 

Yesterday sitting outside a sweet, little Bewick's wren made its way through the little Japanese maple to the birdbath. I was only 5-ish feet away. As it turned and began to hop away, it landed right on the top of my large Quan Yin's head!! It was only a split second before it hopped onto the little fence but it was the most perfect thing ever, it's little feet right there on her head. 

Friday morning~

You're on your way or already in London as I write this. I hope you're feeling better. 

So, what goes up must come down, right? Or, for every expansion there is an equal and opposite contraction. At least in the healing/birthing process. Yesterday on the ipad with Faye, Katie was just so dismissive and mean with Faye that she cried. It brought me so much pain. Pain that stabbed like a knife right in my heart. Katie has loved babies her entire life, I never dreamed she could be such an unkind and hurtful mom. Or that another baby would be born and he would be the light of her life to the extent that Faye almost ceases to exist. (Oh my god, generational wound right there.) They are so alone up there in the mountains, Faye must feel so alone at those times, and others. Not even any friends. Not going to actual school to meet kids. I know these are all "stories" that keep repeating that prolong the suffering. And also they're true. I also know that for my own little five-year-old, Katie becomes my mom instead of my daughter who is also suffering but doesn't even know it. After we hung up the pain came on and was with me for the rest of the day, and still this morning tears come easily as I write this. It is intense and I know that is because it hits right at my own mother wound. History really is repeating itself. I mean almost exactly. And I get really mad at Katie and blame her. And I don't want to do that. 

Then Annie tells me that she's planning to send cards to her "cousins." Cindy's kids, Matthew and Edrea, whom she has not seen in decades. WTF? I was really surprised, but tried to be neutral and supportive. She has the right of course. But it just feels like such a betrayal. First, they are not people in her life and haven't been since they were kids. But more, I've never been allowed to even talk to her about it, I've never gotten any sympathies from her for my loss and now she's going to send them condolences cards? I guess I'm pretty mad at both of my kids right now. I didn't share any of this with her, just tried to be supportive but she could tell that it didn't hit me well and she did apologize for telling me and realized she shouldn't have told me and said that if I want she won't tell me if/when she sends them. I said that would be best. 

I wish I was the one on vacation. Truly. From everything. 

Theres one good thing, Nora. The winter birds are back! And early! I heard the Northern Flicker call a few days ago and was so surprised. I think last year they were much later, maybe even November. Then the last couple of days I've seen birds that last winter I hadn't realized were winter birds but now realize seeing them again that I haven't seen them in months. Fledgling birder! It's honestly a joy to welcome them back again, to realize that they've had to travel distances to get here and how wonderful it is. And how much I've missed seeing them. I mean I realized I wasn't seeing them but just thought maybe they were busy tending to their young. But no. They're back. So many of the birds that I met and grew to love last year. Not only the flickers, but white-crowned sparrows, golden-crowned sparrows; some I didn't see but Merlin heard, like cedar waxwings. What an incredible thing migration is. 

No fog this morning so Poppy and I are going to head out. I think to our local creek today, the one that runs year around. It's so amazing after all the rain last year. So many water plants growing and still plenty of water. I sit and watch so many birds land on the reeds, then on the little rocks and take a nice long drink. Even acorn woodpeckers which are usually high up in the old oak trees. 

I've never been to London except twice to take a bus between Heathrow and Gatwick to catch our connecting flights to and from home and Paris. I look forward to hearing about it. I hope it's good for you. 

Oh. I've changed a setting on the comments and am hoping that you can now comment with no problem. Fingers crossed.

With Love

💗🙏🏻☺️

A little PS after sent: I'm really tired of carrying the responsibility for the trauma of this family alone. I'm really tired of living my whole life folding myself up like a pretzel in the quest for the contours of atonement. They are both adults. They both know about therapy and the healing journey. Much more on this I'm sure when you return.  

Below: mourning dove, white-crowned sparrow, song sparrow, and the best hummingbird shot I’ve gotten!

Here We Are~ And Nature with Marti Spiegelman

Friday, Sept. 22, 2023 

Autumn Equinox 

Good morning, Nora, 

It’s after 5am and I’ve been awake since 3. I woke from a dream that I remember nothing about, not even that I was dreaming, but the anxiety and dread that filled me instantly told me there must have been a dream. When I wake in this place I need company and so I usually listen to one of my favorite news podcasts. More on this in a minute. But it does strike me that this is historically my favorite time of day to write you. So here we are. You, me, Venus rising in the predawn sky just out my window, autumn equinox, the beginning of my very favorite time of year where we move into the sacred time of darkness. 

It hasn’t started well, these three weeks. We’ve been smoked in since late Tuesday afternoon, making my planned mornings in nature not doable. I haven’t been sleeping well and the fibro is flaring badly. I lay awake for hours the last two nights, my entire body burning with pain. I’m tired and sleep deprived and I’ve lost touch with the light of my being and feel depressed. This after four wonderful days with Faye, each day watching her lose her initial shyness and get warmer and warmer again. One moment stands out. We were holding hands as always walking to the park next to my home when something was said, I can’t remember now what it was or which of us said it but it produced in her a genuine rush of affection the likes of which I haven’t experienced in her; she held my hand tighter and squished up next to me as we walked, putting her sweet head against my arm, looking up at me.. What a joy that was! There is so much regret, so much sadness at the physical distance that felt necessary – though I question that now – and I can no longer hold back from her and when we get to the park, where we are out of sight of Annie and her fear, I always sit and give her a big hug and then hold her. Just like when I’m visiting them at their place. It feels like the beginning of some repair, at least I hope that it is, and I see that moment when she did not check her impulse for closeness as an encouraging sign. I cannot hold Silas without also holding her. Speaking of Silas, what a wonder he is. I can see through him, through how he and I connect with ease, with how he connected with ease with Annie, who met him this week for the first time, that there is already a knowing with all of us. I did not have to worry about the distance making it difficult. He knows us and we know him. I had very little time with him, the focus was time with Faye and time for Katie to get out without Faye, but even if I held him only for five minutes or just talked to him in his carseat, the smiles were instantaneous and from the core of his sweet being. 

So this morning I knew that I could not listen to more news. I’m so worn out of it all, and tired of bringing it constantly into my field, into my being. The unhinged toxicity. But I’ve never known how to find other things to listen to when I have the need of another human voice, when I am not in the right state to listen to music or a meditation. (I have tried listening to library books and sometimes that works, but this morning I could tell I was awake for a while so I wanted something not to lull me back to sleep, which didn’t seem doable anyway, but something that might be meaningful, even good for my soul.) So this morning I had an epiphany; I thought of one of my favorite books, “The Dream of the Cosmos,” and I put the author’s name into the search field in podcasts. Up came the most amazing podcasts that I haven’t known existed, about the sacred feminine, about consciousness, about this era we are in and the new human, the new humanity, of relationship, of connectedness, of love and care for others and for our planet, that will need to be birthed if we are going to be saved as a species. (Ervin Laszlo believes the 'new human' is already beginning to be born on earth.)

So many breadcrumbs dropped and found ala Hansel and Gretel, all to help me find my way home to my deepest being and my continued path. This wonderful conversation I listened to this morning scattered the crumbs to be followed next; books I didn’t know about that are intriguing, talks that seem important to listen to, topics that are now of interest. I look over at the pile of books next to my bed and marvel at the transition that has quietly occurred in the past couple of months, all of my beloved nature essay collections, all of my Gretel Ehrlich and Peter Matthiessen books (except of course “The Snow Leopard” which has a permanent place there) have given way to books and authors that until a few weeks ago I was unaware of. “Awakening Earth,” “The Great Disruption,” “The Living Universe,” “The Doors of Perception,” “Merchants of Light,” all now sit beside the LSD book – still unfinished for now is not the right time – that started it all. Incredible. Wow. 

It’s so useful to put this all in writing because I can now see the profundity of it in a way that I hadn’t before. Maybe not being able to write right now is no accident. (As painful as it is.) Maybe there is a purpose. Maybe I need to expand beyond that, hopefully to be returned to but also who knows?. It helps me see the path behind me with far more clarity; the thinking formerly being that I left behind things that shouldn’t have been left behind—the Gemini being easily bored and butterfly like, also the proverbial jack of all trades, master of none. I think of astrology, of Women Who Run With the Wolves, all the things I studied for so many years, and see it all differently now, including why I have not been successful trying to return to them. They are not, I see clearly now, things that were accidentally left behind that need to be returned to. Rather, they were key aspects of this journey. They were important, they were vital, they changed me, they inspired me, they helped me grow and transform; they are part of the journey, the complicated, sometimes chaotic, colorful mosaic that I am. Pretty revolutionary. 

(Earlier I experienced a profound rush of gratitude that I was led to Deborah all these years ago now, for there I learned about the soul and soul work, about the inner journey, and was introduced to Jung and the language of the soul, dreams and archetypes, etc., and that was the very first opening, it was the fork in the road and changed me fundamentally and also altered the trajectory entirely.)

Outside the sun has swallowed Venus as it rises through smoke hovering between unhealthy for sensitive groups to just plain unhealthy. Poppy sleeps curled up next to me. The first birdsong breaks the stillness. Yesterday the funk, like the smoke, was so thick I didn’t know how I was going to come through it. It wasn’t until halfway through the day that I found music I was able to listen to and opened my large ipad and worked on photos for a while before transitioning to a seascape I’m working on with fabric… 

Do you remember telling me the last time we talked before you left that you were surprised at how good your watercolors are? I hope I understood what you were saying correctly and that I’m paraphrasing accurately. I’m so glad you said that because it gives me permission to say that I am pretty surprised and awed at the art that is coming out of me with fabric and stitching. Not the older things you’ve seen, not that those were bad, but the newer work seems to have a certain surprising quality to it, almost an elegance. None of my dozens of inspiration pieces have that quality. In fact slow-stitch in general doesn’t seem to have that quality. It’s casual, with it’s raw edges and imperfect stitches. But I am loving it, and honestly moved by how lovely they are. (Waiting for the backlash~) It inspires me to keep going and see what wants to be created next! 

A couple of days later~ 

You texted this morning! It was so nice to wake to that. I’ve edited this letter just a little and now I will add a little to it and send it thanks to your invitation. 

The podcast I listened to yesterday morning that I referenced in my text is a different one that I wrote about earlier in this letter. This one featured a woman I had never known of named Marti Spiegelman who for the last twenty plus years has been taught and indoctrinated by shamans from ancient cultures around the world; and she now teaches. What she said spoke to me so much I think because of the experience I had last mid-winter and winter when I went out almost every morning in nature as an answer to the really difficult and painful place I had been in, and even though my intention was not to try to change anything, it ended up changing so much. 

Here is some of what she said (Italics are my emphasis): 

 

Every original human wisdom culture around the world knows that we are here to be stewards of consciousness itself. And to be the conduits of creation. That we be aware of the world, wired into the world, informed by the world, and that we be the caretakers not only of our own consciousness but of the land that we belong to.  

We have a memory in our cells of full consciousness. We have a memory in our cells of our capacity to be connected to the world; that is our nature; we belong to the world as well as to one another. This is what indigenous wisdom is. The key is through the magic of awareness being connected in the world again. To perceive is to know the world through the senses. The senses bring instant knowing. A little bit of attention on nature everyday will change you...

 The oldest exercise in the world for training consciousness is to be taken out to some wild place, or even to some wild little piece of a park, and you sit down and you stay in that place and experience your whole surroundings through your senses without thinking. Learning to do that what you experience is that you are a part of it; the separation that is so inherent in modern consciousness dissolves as the world fills you up and your body wakes up to the memory that you're part of this and its constantly being spoken into being. Completely shifts the experience of life, it makes it so much easier to live and to thrive in the world we have. 

The outcome of these ancient practices, called 'being in a place well," is there's no emptying (as in contemplative practice) whatsoever, you are filled with the world and filled with the awareness of your connection and your part in it. You are informed as to your value your function your presence and how important it is. You learn, moment to moment to moment, and instead of thinking and trying to figure things out after the fact you are informed in the moment, you know via experience. So sensing is what takes the place of thinking. Thinking is after the fact of experience.

(Me: Ah, yes, just as we've talked about, too much thinking after the fact in my writing, getting in the way of the experience just flowing out...)

Re the existential questions, who am I, why am I here, etc, she says: I find that there is no need to ask these questions. (Me~ I love this! Does the heart need to ask these questions, does the soul need to ask?!) The experience of being part of the larger system dissolves the existential approach that western cultures have fallen into in life. It begins to be an experience rather than an idea or an explanation. It becomes an experience of being gifted life moment to moment and you know it's coming from large immeasurable indescribable forces but you come to know those forces and are known by them. So you don't have to ask the questions anymore. You have more of yourself, you have all of yourself, all of your life force for living. It becomes so much easier. So all of your attention is for living. You are part of the pulsing universe, you are a cell in a huge living organism which can wake up a sense of belonging, a sense that everything is really okay, a sense that I am worth something and am supposed to be here, and so I don't need the existential question anymore. Those questions are deep in modern consciousness because we've separated from the system of life.  

Important distinction to notice the difference between our emotional responses and what we are responding to. Otherwise the emotions become the experience. The emotions become the story rather than what was being responded to being the story. Important to distinguish between the thing in nature that makes you happy and your response of happiness. For most people that is enough to change their life.  

(Wow!)

Me: 

It is amazing to think about this new for me study of cosmic consciousness, and all that is connected that I'm being exposed to, this introduction and this path, that even though it has only just come into my knowing recently, I was actually doing this practice, "being in a place well," intuitively months and months ago. Wow. And to think that all of this has been brought to me, the branches of which are many and stretch in so many different directions, including even just finishing watching a video about unified field physics without my eyes glazing over or going instantly to sleep, is just so amazing and hard to believe! What is the universe up to?? 

Nora, thank you for saying that it's okay to send this to you. Though I'm not planning to send writings often, it does feel important to know that you know what's going on with me in a sort of real time. Because it does feel as though what is going on with me has sped up. And it really helps me continue to feel connected to you, and most likely then with myself, too. I'm pretty gobsmacked really when I think about all of this that is so new but which is now becoming a big part and focus in my life. Who knew?? In fact, this time is beginning to feel similar to that time early in therapy with Deborah, when so much came so rapidly into my life with its huge changes. 

I'm thinking about you in Paris, and hoping it's a truly wonderful time. And hope that your gut is healing quickly! Thank you so much again. I'm beyond grateful to be on this incredible journey with you as guide, wisdom, midwife, and so much more! 

Much Love,

Debby