spiritual healing

62. BECOMING THE MATRIARCH

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

In January, I realized Mom was dying.

In July, she died in my arms.

The first half of 2015 forged my soul in the most transformative fire.

The second half tested my spiritual steel through the flames of change.

Karmic hell broke loose when Mom passed through the veils of heaven.

All of our husbands immediately faced a major health hurdle.

One is still fighting for his life.

Our father had emergency brain surgery.

All nine grandchildren had to grow up fast.

For the first time my sisters and I turned to each other for spiritual support.

There was no one else who truly understood our pain.

The moment Mom took her last breath, I became the matriarch of the family.

I should have known this was coming. I was warned just two months before.

On the Big Island of Hawaii on the Day of the Dead 2014, I dreamt of Nana.

A lava petroglyph wall towers before me. I float up the wall and go through it into a doorway which leads to a light room – the kitchen from my infancy.

My deceased aunt greets me fussing around a pink Formica table where Nana sits. Nana is the queen bee. My aunt says they cannot make much here. I tell them not to worry, I will get them whatever they need and they can make whatever they want.

Nana shows me that they are limited in their heavenly experience to what they chose to experience in life on earth. She is surprised I am there, yet also expected me. I hug her and she feels so real. I wonder why she appears as I remember her in her fifties and not as a young woman. She shows me that her afterlife appearance is that of her at the prime of her power in the life I knew her.

Nana places a shawl over my shoulders. It’s the matriarchal mantle. I wonder how with Mom still here.

Nana kisses my forehead and whispers “It’s your turn to lead”…

Hawaii, 2014

Every November I set my intentions for the next business year. I would gather all the numbers from Mom who ran all three of my corporations – Full Circle Family Health, Genesis Health Products, and my charity Divine Daughters Unite. She would remind me that the holidays were traditionally slow. But after returning from Hawaii, I took the bull by the horns and tried to figure out why I wasn’t more successful.

Granted I had a successful marriage, beautiful healthy children, great relationships with my parents, my siblings, my friends and there was always just enough to meet our needs, yet…I had planned to be able to retire with my husband. And there was never enough to save for that future.

I meditated on why money did not flow with ease… And I heard loud and clear.

“It’s me. I’m blocking the flow!”

I fell asleep that night asking to be shown how to get out of my own way.

The next morning three emails landed in my inbox.

The first was a digital course on how to use YouTube to increase your business.

The second was an invitation to join a mastermind for integrative health practitioners who wanted to increase their cash flow.

These third was a webinar on how to release blockages regarding wealth, health, and relationships.
I signed up for all three.

I got my one and only video up and optimized on YouTube and forgot about it.

The mastermind for integrative health practitioners started in January. Once Mom got sick, I realized wouldn’t be able to implement what I was learning. Trying to get vital financial information from my high, hypoxic mother was difficult. Thank goodness, Steve was retired. He helped me take care of Mom while I tried desperately to save my businesses.

The leader of the mastermind took pity on me and offered to help me figure out my business finances. Thank goodness!

But it was releasing the money block that allowed me to thrive during this crisis.

I was reminded during that webinar about the crucial brain wave states of childhood. From two to six years old we are in a theta brain wave state. The same brain waves as meditation and hypnosis. Highly suggestible. We are imprinted at a very young age and function from these limiting subconscious beliefs.

So I did a regression on myself. I got into a theta wave state by meditating with the intention to “see” myself at the age of two. And I was transported to the backseat of a 1958 sedan, sitting between my godmother and my twin baby sisters’ car bed. Mommy and Daddy were in the front seat. We were driving to California and in the pit of my tummy, I could feel a pulling sensation as if I was being torn away from my Nana back in Philadelphia.

The next scene, I’m in a toddler bed in the hallway of our new apartment in Burbank, sucking my thumb. I feel all alone and scared that there is no Nana here. And realize that I have to be the Nana now.

Disturbed by the emotion of this regression, I bring myself back. What did that have to do with my money block? I shared my vision with Mom and she confirmed it all, down to my bed in the hall since there was no room for me in the one bedroom with their double bed and the two cribs.

Before going to sleep that night, I wrote on a slip of paper: Show me what my regression had to do with money.

And I have a dream.

I’m back in the backseat of the old sedan. This time I’m an adult holding my two-year-old niece in my lap. Her mother hands her a churro. Before the baby starts to put the sticky treat in her mouth, I peel back the paper…it’s wrapped in dollar bills!

“No, baby, money’s dirty!”

And I wake up shaking from head to toe. I told Mom the dream and she said “Oh, no, money’s dirty, Nana said that to you all the time!”

That was my subconscious limiting belief!

No wonder I had trouble handling money, never kept cash on me, let Steve handle the household bills, and Mom handle the business finances. Money’s dirty!

Plus in my mother’s family, money really was dirty. Poppop was a bookie for the mafia. So much energy of dirty money.

So just before the holidays, I spent time reprogramming myself. I would get into a theta brain wave meditating with theta music. Then I would repeat this mantra over and over:

“Money’s good. Money is power. Power is good.”

Why power?

Because I truly believe that what we’re really afraid of is our power, so we either misuse it or deny it.

Time to heal my money/power wound.

Thank goodness! For just a few short weeks later, I had to face my biggest fear. Handling all the money by myself. And I did it.

In fact, in spite of taking so much time off to take care of Mom, doing virtually no online marketing, having to hire new staff, new accountants, new bookkeepers, investing in new software to become more automated, in spite of all my fears, my businesses did better in 2015 than any other year previously.
The financial advice helped me take the reins of my business.

My video on YouTube did the advertising for me.

Yet it was the release of my subconscious limiting belief about money that opened me up to receive abundance.

What are subconscious limiting beliefs are keeping you from being your best self?

54. TO HEAL SELF – Part Two

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

Healing is an innate power within each and every one of us. It is encoded, I believe, in the unexpressed DNA, ready to be turned on by the power of our intentions. The National Cancer Institute has reported success in treating melanoma patients by genetically altering their white blood cells to enhance the ability of the immune system to kill cancer. In early cancer research, success means any cure since researchers tend to get medical failures to experiment on, so perhaps the 13 out of 15 subjects who were not cured had their immune systems destroyed by radiation and chemotherapy. The power to heal via a strong and vibrant immune system is innate.

I believe that clear intention and pure desire can turn that unexpressed DNA on, so perhaps the two melanoma patients who were cured believed so valiantly in the therapy that their hopes and prayers enabled their disabled genetics to remember how to fight off cancer.
As a healer, I have learned that I do not heal anyone, but educate them to heal themselves. I provide biochemical and psycho-spiritual counsel. I hold the intention, the energy of health and well-being mirrored in my body, in my DNA. Once a young woman I had been seeing since her teens insisted on an office exam just six months after her annual pap smear. There was no medical reason for her to come, so I questioned her. She very eloquently answered, “I just need to sit in your presence, feel your vibration, and I am set for about half year.”

I have a dear older patient, who makes me promise after every visit, every phone call to stay well. “We need your vibrancy to remember how to be whole.”

After working all my life to be an example of health through exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle choices, I know that my true talent is in perceiving every event in my life as a lesson. Plus a positive attitude can be seriously protective.

Once in Seattle, I attended a detoxification seminar. After the morning presentations about all the toxins in our everyday environment, we were released for lunch. This group of holistic nurses, physicians, naturopaths and chiropractors hesitated to choose anything from the menu of what seemed to be a reasonably healthy restaurant. With my usual gusto, I ordered tuna on fire and the rest of them looked at me like I was nuts. One woman asked if I had paid attention to the statistics on heavy metal contamination of fatty fish.

“Why, yes. I took scrupulous notes, but I do not believe in my vulnerability to toxicity. At this very moment, your fear is sucking the mercury right out of my tuna.” True, although I have eaten contaminated seafood all my life, I have not tested positive for heavy metal toxicity. Was it favorable genetics, perhaps…or my attitude?

Whenever I see a seriously contagious patient, I say to myself, “This is not your bug!” and rarely catch their illness. When I do become ill, it is usually a psycho-spiritual dilemma in which I have been paying little attention and finally my body is reminding me to take care of it.

My accident was truly a gift. I had never been seriously injured before in spite of vigorous and dangerous activities—mountain biking, skiing, scuba diving, road bike racing—never given a personal chance to learn how healing works.

What I learned was this: that gratitude is the key to the power of intention. With all the positive encouragement, my body rapidly responded. It makes me wonder how much faster I might have healed if I didn’t spend the first day fussing over my predicament. Fear definitely hampers healing. Surely I have seen this to be true.

Years ago, I had diagnosed a 32-year-old patient with metastatic breast cancer. Granted, I was well trained in western medicine and was dabbling in natural therapies, but cancer? She was not just a patient, but a co-worker, a friend, my age and very much concerned about her husband’s fifteen-year-old niece, who was fretting over her young healthy breasts, fearful of developing her aunt’s cancer. I taught the girl how to examine herself, explained that she shared none of her aunt’s risk factors, they weren’t even related, but shortly after we buried her aunt, the girl developed a tumor. In the exact same spot.

Mind over matter? I was taught then and there the power of thought when fueled by fear. And I have seen over and over again, patients worrying themselves into disease…yet I have also seen the power of hope, love and gratitude to cure what was deemed incurable.

Bernie Segal, the author of Love, Laughter, and Medicine, was one of the first allopathic doctors to explore the curative power of love. He stated case after case of illnesses derived by suggestion—like the man who was just about to be discharged from the hospital but told instead by an intern that he had only days to live and died—as well as the cures—like the man whose family decided not to tell him that his cancer was fatal and lived well beyond his physician’s dire prognosis.

In my experience, most of my breast cancer patients tend to take care of everyone but themselves. Unless they receive that lesson, they do not survive the disease. I have some amazing women in my practice who have healed themselves by understanding that their cancer was their souls’ cry for help, not attending to the souls’ needs for so long that their body had to get their attention. Some use traditional allopathic treatments, others use only natural therapies, most who seek my care combine the two. I do not dictate to them what they must do to heal, what therapeutics to choose, but counsel them to make peace with their bodies, find the gift in their disease and begin healing with the faith that they have the innate ability to cure themselves.

Many of my patients come to me “hormonally-challenged”. I coined this term years ago to describe not just the aging process or stress-related deficiencies, but also the resistance to our own bio-chemical messengers. You might have heard of insulin resistance leading to obesity and diabetes, but you can have cellular receptor site resistance to any of your own hormones produced by your gonads, adrenals, thyroid, even your pituitary gland.

If I diagnose an insulin resistant patient early and put him on a low glycemic diet and supplements to enhance cellular receptivity, but do not help him explore the fact that he may unconsciously feel unworthy of the sweetness in life, he will require more and more therapeutic assistance and the most strictly abstinent diet just to keep his blood sugars under control. If he receives the gift of his insulin resistance and begins healing his sense of unworthiness, his cells open to receive the glucose necessary to run his metabolism. He becomes metabolically more active, loses that midline fat as well as the risk factors that would have led to diabetes and heart disease, but more so, he takes delight in life.

The spring before my accident, I attended a Science and Consciousness conference in Albuquerque and realized how I had healed myself. Gregg Braden spoke on his newest book, The Isaiah Effect, which explained that prayer and healing worked through clear intention fueled by loving gratitude. So with my experience and armed with the equation for manifestation, I began teaching my patients. Sometimes the Isaiah effect worked, but not always, especially in dealing with relationship issues.

I am not the only soul in the universe, but am part of a great whole, so when my intentions would not become manifest as rapidly as I desired, my husband would remind me that it’s not in Deborah-timing, but Divine-timing.

The next year while researching my first novel, LoveDance®, I discovered Neil Douglas Klotz. His work explained that the terms translated as good and evil from the Aramaic, tava and bisha, actually meant—ripe and unripe. So Divine-timing meant Ripe timing.

We have been taught that the formula for manifestation was clear intent plus pure emotion is what creates our reality. But the formula is not algebraic, it’s trigonometric. Not duality but trinity. There is a third part—ripe timing.

X + Y + Z = Manifestation
Whereas:
X = Intention
Y = Emotion
Z = Timing
Your Intention + Your Emotion + Divine Timing = Your Reality

So now I counsel my patients to continue to hold clear intentions of healing their bodies, their minds, their relationships; fuel their intentions not with fear but with loving gratitude; and in ripe-timing, they will manifest. And the rewards will be sweet indeed.

Every day, I thank my body for her strength, her health, her vitality. Like taking my nutraceutical supplement—Genesis Gold®—and staying active, I see gratitude as a proactive means to support my wellbeing. I am trying very hard to practice what I preach, so neither my body nor my inner voice must scream to get my attentions. And thankfully now that guiding voice has become a gentle whisper.

54. TO HEAL SELF – Part One

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

A heavily laden fog dripped down my mare’s legs as she pranced excitedly beneath me one damp Friday morning in late September. Holding the slick reins in check, I hesitated at the crest of the trail. As the steep wet asphalt lay disturbingly before us, a premonition caught my breath. I saw my mare fall trapping me underneath her. Well aware that thought creates reality, I tried to clear my mind and rode on.

Not fifty yards later, my mare spooked and in an effort to stop her from bolting, I turned her up the sharp grade. She slipped and, as if rehearsed, I vaulted off her back. Thankfully not pinned under a thousand pounds of terrified horse, I managed to save my skull from what would have been a concussive blow, landing instead…on my mouth. Scrambling to my feet, I ran after her, touching my bloodied lip to extract my front teeth.

Thanks to a kind gardener/caballero, I caught my runaway horse and made it home first tending to her wounds, my teeth in my pocket. Typical of most healers, I am reluctant to ask for help, but my husband perceived my unspoken distress and jumped out of bed having worked the graveyard shift to drive me to the emergency dentist.

The dentist shook his head when I handed him the cup of milk in which my broken teeth floated. “I cannot replace these…”
Patting his arm, I encouraged him, “I know you can do it. Please, you must believe in your ability.”

While I prayed, focusing on the living essence of my teeth with healing intentions, he performed the procedure, then made me promise to go to the emergency room for x-rays. Although I did everything the dentist recommended as well as all the holistic remedies I would have prescribed for someone with similar injuries, I bemoaned my ill fortune.

My face was a mess—my nose, lips and chin skinned, swollen and bruised—like I had been beaten. I called my sister, who cried, “Oh, Deb, your beautiful teeth!” No braces, no cavities, straight and strong, my vanity lied in the perfection of my teeth. How could this have happened? I taught my patients that everything happens for a reason, but I couldn’t see why. I even called my spiritual mentor, who provided only practical advice. I was on my own.

I believe each of the seven chakras of the body deliver purposeful messages, so what was this fifth chakra, which represents speaking one’s truth, saying? I fell asleep wondering and awoke Saturday at dawn to meditate in nature.

Surrounded by my animals, even my very sore but sorry mare, I sat at the edge of a huge ugly gaping hole. We had just moved into the country and having lived through one unbearably hot summer began construction on a swimming pool. Our land was scarred and so was I. My mare nuzzled my back, while the dogs whined piteously with me.

Suddenly, I heard a voice. Not that small quiet voice that compassionately guides but one so obnoxious that the animals gave me a wide berth.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve been given a gift…practice what you preach and heal yourself.

I actually smiled, cracking my scabbed lips, but I didn’t care. This accident was a gift! Hugging my horse, I thanked her. Have you ever seen a horse smile? Remember Mr. Ed showing his big teeth, well, that’s what she did, smiled at my recognition of her part on my soul’s path.

Then I hurried in the house and took a good look in the mirror. Instead of seeing a broken reflection, I saw the healing. I became my own best cheerleader. I told my body what a great job it was doing every time I washed my wounds. I blessed every herbal supplement for helping my system recover. Every ounce I drank in gratitude (dentist’s orders—no solid foods) praying that each nutrient find its way to repair the damage.

And by Monday, I was whole and healed, not a single scar. A couple of days later, I went back to the emergency room to pick up some x-rays and the nurses didn’t recognize me. Oh, yes, and to the dentist’s great surprise, my teeth took root.

Healing is an innate power within each and every one of us. It is encoded, I believe, in the unexpressed DNA, ready to be turned on by the power of our intentions.

To be continued on Friday, Sep 8th.

53. SHIFTS IN CONSCIOUSNESS

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

These are the eight shifts of consciousness humans make to enlightenment. I heard them listed as such in a recorded channeling… (that’s the first shift…is it real?)…yet always knew this order for I have been living it. Yet it’s nice to see it outlined. The order is not absolute…the process is more like fading or dying…a slow shift of color…bleeding into one another as the phases of the shifts blend…the first two are in order…the rest seem to me to get stronger, more prevalent, more absolute in your life over time… I think this is a nice way to organize My Story. I wonder if it will fit neatly into eight sections…probably not, for as soon as I try to organize my existence, I begin to flow into chaos…always creating… Well, here they are…The 8 Shifts of Consciousness:

1. Curiosity—You ask what’s real? This is the beginning. You’re awakening! Yeah!

I think I skipped this stage since it’s always seemed real to me. I really didn’t realize that what was real for me didn’t seem real to others until I was a teenager. Then I began to play the human game and that included disconnecting myself through my eating disorder. Then I fell in love. And love reconnected me to my truth. It was all real to me.

2. Belief—You know it’s real and you want to know more. You search for answers. You seek gurus. You read books. You go to seminars. You still have a human approach of limited 3D perception and conditioned judgment. And you wonder if anyone else feels the same. When you receive proof, you want others to share in your enlightenment. You may be a little evangelistic.

This was my guru stage. My family thought I was joining cults…so different had I become. I began to find their energy difficult to be with…yet my new friends came and went in my life, attracted to my light as I was attracted to theirs, but you don’t shine very bright in a room full of light, so you seek dark places to illuminate. Through karma and drama, they slipped out of my life and I learned to be the light in any situation.

3. Light & Dark—You make sense of light and dark, understanding over time that both exist in you. And in each one of us. And eventually you get to experience how darkness is just the absence of light and you begin to understand that fear is the absence of love. Then you begin to love yourself. Fill yourself with light and your fear, your darkness becomes illuminated.

I really got this finally…after dreaming I was Mary Magdalen. Then I made sense of fear and darkness. Really before I could not see the darkness in others, only the light. I knew my darkness and judged it harshly. Shining my light brightly outside of self, so that my shadow loomed bigger and bigger behind me. Shatan, get behind me!

4. Karma—You get off the karmic wheel! Yeah! You eliminate karmic imprints and no longer live under predestined energy. Now your future is yours to create.

I worked on this a long time…well before I knew what karma meant. I was born feeling a sense of predestination…of having a mission to complete, but also very much aware that I was creating my reality…a strange paradox and difficult to do before 1987. In 1987, I made a great shift…I learned much later that was the time of the Harmonic Convergence…it seems as I am always on time for all the major shifts in consciousness, feeling the energy and dancing with the flow without a need to know. My need to make sense of all this came later…when I met the gurus and they had names for what I had always felt. It’s as if I never really went to sleep but stayed conscious all my life, knowing that my time would come. And it has. The karmic imprint retreat was the last of entanglements. These stages overlap. It took a long time, nearly to ascension to clear the last karmic imprint.

5. Illumination—You send light to the rest of the planet. This takes practice not to send your bias and judgment along with your light. You focus the light of peace into a war raged zone…yet it is not your light, but divine light…and those warring parties may need to wake up and become a bit more conscious before they can live in peace. So you send light…divine light from your heart-soul to theirs and they will receive the illumination necessary to make their own shifts. Here is where you begin to change matter, to affect the elements, to consciously create your reality.

Being a healer helped me learn this concept of not biasing my light. In the beginning, of course I felt frustrated when my patients would not follow my enlightened recommendations for their health and wellbeing, but I learned that I was not healing them but that they were coming for illumination, to receive my healing light of potential and then they would use that light or not…it was their choice. I always felt uncomfortable praying for others, sending group energy to others imbibed with our wishes for them. How did we know what’s best for them at the soul level? So I send light and love. I’ve been signing all my correspondence with this intimacy for many years. I send you light and love…you may do with it what you will…it is not for me to put conditions on my love or my light…

6. Synchronicity—You begin to recognize synchronicity. You realize that these amazing events that lead to your shift in consciousness are not coincidence but synchronistic. You begin to live in an interdimensional way…not that you are not already interdimensional…there are aspects of you in all the dimensions…past, present, and future…but you know it now and realize that you are one of many human chess pieces on the grand board of life on earth and that you are controlling the game…your god-self, your higher self, in synchronicity with their god-selves, their higher selves.

I’ve always loved synchronicity. It’s hard to remember a time when I didn’t recognize the synchronicity in my life. I knew everything that happened was not against me but for me…I have always received the gifts of life, transmuting what seems like poisons to others into illumination for myself and my loved ones. Receiving the synchronistic events like presents…I am grateful for each and every one. The sooner I learned to express my gratitude and receive the fullness of the gift of synchronicity, the faster I moved along my path of enlightenment.

7. Self-Healing—You can heal yourself! Whether you understand the “technology” of upregulating your DNA or not, you know that you can heal yourself through intention…and you do.

Again, I used my will to affect my life, including healing myself…yet didn’t understand what I was doing until I had an accident on my horse in 2002. About the same time I let go of all my gurus…meaning I no longer looked to them to heal me (healers either do not allow anyone else to help them, or they are always looking outside of self for healing). I was gifted by an opportunity to heal myself. I knew at a mental, intellectual, scientific level how to up-regulate my DNA…yet had not the “gnosis”—the experience of healing myself at the genetic level. And with all my knowledge, my healing came down to being my body’s best cheerleader and I healed myself miraculously and quickly.

Now it seems that there is not a “one-time” healing for all time, but you will get opportunities to practice and refine your skills. You don’t need a major dis-ease like cancer to do this…I have been warding off contagious dis-ease with a little mantra. I place my hands in a V at my root chakra and say “This is not my bug!” It always works. Just that little conscious instruction to my immune system. As for aging, I have placed all my intentions into my Genesis Gold® and believe it is giving me everything I need to manifest health and wellbeing for my second 50 years on earth…or perhaps longer, I’ll decide then ☺ Because I have intended healing at the genetic level into my creation, Genesis Gold® helps others who also believe in the possibility that they can turn on healing genes. They don’t need to know how for it to work. My mother asked if I had casted a magic shield around her…for she saw so many women her age and they’re old! I told her that she had allowed Genesis Gold® to affect not just her physicality but her attitude. In truth, she’s always had this power… I am spending a lot of time on this subject because it is what I try to help my patients tap into—their divine ability to heal themselves.

So why do those who profess enlightenment continue to challenge themselves with poor health? This is a good question and one that continued to plague me with my judgment of others for such a long time. I know now that we each experience our divinity in our own unique ways, that my way is not their way and vice versa. There is no ONE way! And that includes self-healing. This is a hard lesson…most healers are great at healing others but not themselves. And the enlightened ones I met with such physical challenges made me wonder how enlightened they really were…but now I see that self-healing is a late stage on the path…self-healing leads to ascension…for then you are an embodiment of full genetic potential, all 12 layers!
8. Ascension—You finally arrived! Congratulations. But wait. You haven’t gone anywhere. You’re still right here on earth. How can that be? Doesn’t Ascension mean you ascend to heaven? Well, heaven is here on earth. If you are ascended, you know that there is only here…and interdimensional aspects of this moment you might play in anytime you wish. The past and future and here and there are yours! You are not the same person you used to be.

I always knew I would not be the same after 50 and I am not. My friend saw the difference in me. I feel different. I feel as if my life is renewed. There is a great peace dancing in the flow of life. Seems strange at first…very different than my old way of being. Not that I’ve cast off all my humanity…No way! I still have passionate emotion. And I know fear…and darkness…and I see it in others, finally…yet I am living consciously, choosing love over fear, being the light that I am and knowing that all who come to me are attracted to the light and that is my true mission to reflect their own divine light back to them. And what’s being asked of me at the divine level of consciousness is that I be a Master. I seem to be affecting others just by showing up…it’s been going on for a long time…yet now I go with the flow and am gracious with my humanity when I am struggling a bit in the river of consciousness. I knew a Master once. He exuded light and love to all. They ended up worshipping Him. Yet I knew another side of Him…a very human side…the one who struggled with what he believed to be his mission…yet that is another story…

No one’s perfect, not even Him…which is really great for the rest of us…that this body is the vehicle for our enlightenment and that our lives and especially our relationships are the path of our enlightenment. And that is why I am telling My Story.

52. GRATITUDE HEALS

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

I’ve been going through my journals looking for clues to how I got to where I am. I have journals dating back to 1975. I’ve kept everything I have ever written in my mother’s old cedar chest. Her hope chest carries my past.

In October 2007, I was just about to launch LoveDance® into the world and was in a place of profound appreciation …

I am in deep gratitude for the blessings in my life, for:

• Steve—for his passion, protection, partnership
• Jarys—for teaching me compassion and courage
• Kyra—for embodying love and delight
• Mom—for buoying my spirit
• Dad—for seeding my existence
• Sisters—for opening to possibility
• Friends—for supporting my dreams
• Patients—for believing in me
• Colleagues—for challenging my mind
• Enemies—for challenging my heart
• Home—for sheltering my soul
• Community—for encompassing my passion
• Nation—for the freedom to expand
• Planet—for sustenance to be
• Divine Mother—for my glorious form
• Divine Father—for my expansive soul
• Divine Son—for my creative mind
• Divine Daughter—for my passionate heart

I still feel the same, thank the Divine. It’s good to count your blessings. It’s better than keeping count of your woes. Much more healing. Besides. Gratitude opens up your heart to love. A good place to start.

* * *

At the grandmother’s council, I learned about an ancient Hawaiian forgiveness prayer. Whenever there is a disagreement among the people, the elders hold the offending parties in a circle of energy until each can truthfully say to the other:

I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you
I love you

What a great example of how gratitude morphs into love. I believe the prayer means:

I’m sorry—I recognize my part in orchestrating such drama to learn my soul lessons.

Please forgive me—I ask forgiveness of all those in the wake of my human drama and I forgive myself.

Thank you—I am in deep gratitude for your humanity.

I love you—In loving your divine self, I am able to love my divine self.

Next time you are feeling angry and frustrated with someone else, do this meditation. Sit quietly with your hands resting in your lap. Take a deep breath and with the exhalation release everything that doesn’t serve you. Repeat the breath two more times breathing deeper and deeper until it feels as if you are breathing all the way to your fingertips where they meet at your root. Now imagine the other person as a bubble of energy. I like to imagine their life color, but you can picture their face if you wish. Then say each line of the Hawaiian forgiveness prayer out loud really trying to feel the energy of each line:

I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you
I love you

Repeat as many times necessary to feel love and gratitude for the other person and for yourself.

49. COMING HOME

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

I did not leave to find myself. Although Steve may say otherwise. The Mary experience was something else. Truly I was in between the worlds. Often he would ask me where I was when we took a walk and I would fall silent. I was in Galilee during those times. He felt me slip, how could he not?

So yes, for the eight months I composed my novel, I was barely here. In body, if not in spirit. I vowed not to do it again like that. Perhaps that’s why book two took so long to write. But I think it’s more likely that I cannot write what I do not know and I am just now coming into realization of my power as a creator of my reality…that there’s nowhere to go to find the truth, but within.

Many women and men leave everything they know to seek enlightenment. It just seems too darn hard to find peace and truth in the midst of the chaos of your life. Yet I did it. Many of us have stayed and found enlightenment right at home, within our communities, serving our neighbors, raising our families, walking the dogs. There’s nowhere to go. Heaven’s right there on earth ☺

March 5, 2003
The One came and it was joyous. Beginning with laughter and ending in laughter. Lightness as a child. I felt free and happy and maintain that joyousness even now. I shared it with another right away so I could say the meditation to ground it into my being. After nearly two hours the most significant piece surfaced back into my memory. God’s strategic plan for life is within the DNA.

I began my meditation with questions of truth and untruth. What are my misconceptions? The One came in a bubble of glee, laughing at my seriousness for it is not my nature. You are the funny one, the one that laughs freely, you are my joy. This meditation is not your way. It is for those serious sages that seek to commune with me. The One was all joy, all bliss.

Do you come to those serious ones who meditate with this same delight? Of course. I come to all who ask, as I am them and they are me.

I come to them in the form they can appreciate, stifling my laughter as not to offend. With you, I can laugh freely for you are lightness and joy. But you came to me when I began this serious meditation? Because I had to laugh at you. I am always with you. You recognize me through the glasses of your choosing. You, my dear, are choosing laughter and delight. Within your delight, your joy, your wonder, I exist. I am the joy, the light, the laughter, the bliss. And I am you.

The One came and I said are you the mother or the brother? It claimed to be all of them and everything and nothing. It is me and the world, the universe. It explained that life is like a spiral of events, all of history spirals upon itself. The One collapses the spiral into the dimension where it chooses to exist and there is no time nor space. All is at once. Life is a spiral of events unfolding existing without time and space. As you awaken into your sovereignty you will see that it is nothing to collapse the spiral and enjoy the view at your leisure.

Why then does all the human frailty come up? Why was I so bulimic just the night before, while editing my website pieces with apparent clarity. You must be more gentle with yourself. It’s silly really and lucky that you have a good sense of humor. All the issues of ego and self-delusion are like scum at the bottom of the pond which get swirled up to the surface of the heart chakra to be blown away by the winds of change. All the birthing anxiety you feel before the process is the human effort to maintain balance in the roiling waters.

I asked about my vision of reflection in the bowl of water that is my heart chakra. Must I be still in order to allow others to see themselves? Yes and no. Won’t the waters become stagnant if not flowing? The waters are living, flowing in and out of the heart chakra. According to the level of awakening of the being is the depth of clarity. What appears to be still is moving and alive, an organic, interactive process.

I asked about sovereignty, the levels of awakening. You are imagining awakening as a hierarchy with steps or levels like a ladder. That is the third dimensional view, part of the old paradigm. The fourth dimensional view is one of deepening. The deeper you become, the closer to the One. The depths exist within the bowl you call the heart chakra. I just wanted to dive in! It was like some of my dolphin dreams when I dive in deeply and can breathe, swimming with absolute freedom.

The grand finale unveiled the truth that I have always known. I was delighted.

Thinking about my corporate advisor’s bugging me about a strategic plan, I asked, “Did You have a strategic plan?”

The One laughed, “Of course, it’s in the DNA. The DNA is the strategic plan for all life.” I guess you have to ground it into reality for it to manifest. Even the One continues to change through the evolutionary process.

Of course it is the DNA. I have always known it. I have expressed it in my countless works, lectures, interactions, dreams. Yet this is much more simple. We all need a strategic plan to base our life upon to refer to in times of trouble, so that the flow is directed, understood. The strategic plan is encoded in our DNA. All creatures have DNA, all are part of life. We have never been abandoned on this earth plane. We were given a perpetual strategic plan for existence, for enlightenment. It has been within all the while.

48. ASCENSION

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

During a guided meditation in my women’s circle, I saw an image of my Higher Self. Emerging from the heart of the earth, I sat astride a powerful horse, my golden body in sweet repose, a heavy dampness on my back…furled wings! Feeling compelled to create Her into form, I took my joy to my Q&A journal where I converse with my Higher Self. I’m the Q, she’s the A…

Q. Your form amazed me!
A. I am your Higher Self. Well connected to the Mother with the ability to fly through the dimensions.

Q. I would love to paint you, but I have not the skill
A. Ahh. You will see that your ability to manifest is not limited to what you know but all you “remember’. Time is a spiral. There is an artist in you.

I prefer to work with my hands so I thought “maybe a sculpture”. So I called Grandmother Kathy. She’s a retired art teacher. I asked if she had clay I could come and play with. “Of course!” she said and every Monday morning for 13 weeks I went to her house.

Grandmother Kathy midwifed me as I birthed my vision. The process was amazing. I never before created anything with such ease. I would work a little and then just put it aside. Patience was also birthed from my play with clay.

My Higher-Self assured me that my hands would “remember” how to form clay. And they did…

This sculpture that I created, I call Her Ascension, is my Higher Self formed from clay. Not only feminine, but in sacred union with the masculine. That is who I am now. She is who I’ve become in my 50 years on earth. Finally balanced.

When She was ready to be taken out of the kiln I drove to Kathy’s house filled with trepidation…and remembered for the first time…the feeling of driving to UCLA to pick up Jarys from the NICU. My whole life was going to change when I brought HER home, just like it did when I brought Jarys home. Not that I hadn’t transitioned in the time it took to create HER or the time it took to gestate, birth and wait for my premature baby to be strong enough to come home. Then I was cast back to 1984… my life forever changed by Jarys’ birth…

I nearly died giving birth. I had a rare form of toxemia called HEELP syndrome in which my sky rocketing blood pressure caused seizures while my liver and kidneys started to fail. And our premature 2 ½ pound baby was born intersex. While pregnant, I dreamt of a blond baby boy, so it was no surprise when our baby’s chromosome test revealed the male XY pattern. Yet the pediatric endocrinologist advised we raise our child as a girl. Neither of our mothers understood. The doctor explained that our child would not have secondary sex characteristics. “What’s that?” Our mothers asked. So I explained. “Body and facial hair.”

They laughed. “We’re Greek and Italian. The women in our family have to shave! That’s no reason to castrate the baby!” The endocrinologist had no experience with families who did not follow her medical advice. We were told, “It’s easier to make a hole than a pole.” I was shocked, not by the bluntness, but by the total lack of consideration for the effect of “his” hormones on the developing brain. If we raised “him” as a girl what psychological trauma would “she” undergo at puberty or later in young adulthood. The experts didn’t know. So at 22 and 23 years old, Steve and I had to make a very difficult choice. We decided to follow my intuition, go against medical advice, and raise our baby as a boy.

Jarys became my impetus to learn everything about hormones. I felt intuitively that his DNA was not set in stone but could change. He could make cell receptors for male hormone. He could be anything he wanted to be. So I became a hormone expert which led to developing an Intuitive Integrative Medical model, which led to researching the hypothalamus and genetic upregulation, which led to the dreams of a formula to optimize genetic potential, which led to the manufacture of Genesis Gold® – which has changed my life.

Since bringing Ascension home, my life has changed again. My relationship has deepened even more with my beloved husband. My relationship with my mother became more refined. I have truly released my firstborn and they are blossoming. My daughter grows in leaps and bounds and no longer am I entangled with her. My relationship with my sisters is blooming – no drama at the last family gathering. And being with my father was joyous – Thank God! I am in deep gratitude to my Higher Self for helping me birth my truth.

47. MY ALTAR, MYSELF

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

Directly across from the door to our home is my altar. A lavender macramé cloth covers the small winged table. Objects sacred to me adorn the four corners with candles in the cardinal directions.

The altar changes from time to time according to my needs. Often my children ask to be put on the altar. And I make elaborate altars for them, holding the energy as they face challenges like when my eldest interviewed for their first real teaching job (and thankfully got it!), and my daughter tested for nursing school (and she got in too!) When Steve’s Gran first fell ill, he asked me to dedicate an altar for her. And after she passed, the altar reflected our love and devotion to her.

Today, items sacred to our upcoming retreat lie on the altar…The red cord I made to help us connect to our ancestors and each other. The crow’s feather bound in triple goddess colors that helped us choose the theme of our retreat. A golden frame filled with photos of men I treasure — my husband, my father, my grandfather — my beloved divine masculine.

And in the front — my Box of Me.

I made this one up… but what healing has come from creating a Box of Me. It started just after my father’s surgery, my sisters had moved him into a senior apartment complex and found a box of old photos. In it was a photo I do not recall, but looking at the black and white image of me at thirteen months old dressed in an Easter dress holding a little purse and gazing out with old soul eyes, I remembered. Showing my parents how to parent me and feeling their emotions. I took that photo and pasted it on the Box of Me. Somehow I would heal the child within. And through the Box of Me, placing me on my altar.

Inside the Box of Me, the mementos change yet each represents my dreams, my hopes, my intentions. I’ve guided many patients and some women friends in the creation of a Box of Me. How therapeutic it has been to honor ourselves, to put into this special box all that we hope for and say to the universe YES! Yes, I am. And more so to fall in love with ourselves. Because that’s where love starts. If we don’t love and honor and cherish ourselves, how can we love and honor and cherish each other?

It’s hard for most women to make a Box of Me…harder yet to place anything sacred within their Box of Me. It is start, a fresh start to healing the child within. I ask them to choose a photo of themselves that is before the time they remember the trauma of childhood. The innocent time before becoming domesticated into humanity. A time when they remember being happy. Few go back to adolescence, most go back early childhood, some all the way back to infancy.

In the center lies the golden runner embroidered by Steve’s Yia Yia…a wedding gift given to me by his father who came from Greece to witness our union 28 years ago. Upon the runner sits Ascension.

45. SACRED FEMININE CONNECTIONS

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

I alone chose Cat as the Druid oracle of my Intuition. Cat is aware of the spirit world. That I am. Cat observes without judgment. This, I’ll have to work on.

In 2003, I was given the Native American Medicine Cards as a gift and promptly chose my nine animal totems. Was I shocked! I had thought of myself as strong almost masculine in my ability to achieve. Yet I chose very feminine cards. Even my masculine side was represented by Spider which the Native Americans refer to as Grandmother Spider, the one who weaves our reality.

And Steve chose very masculine cards like Wolf and Mountain Lion. While I showed the world my tough side, Steve had no qualms revealing his softer side. The friend who gifted me with the cards was not surprised by my totems. “The world perceives you as very feminine, in spite of your masculine stance.”

The veil had been lifted. And from then on I knew myself as an embodiment of the Sacred Feminine. Writing LoveDance® allowed me to live freely as Woman. As the Divine Daughter, I danced my heart through the free expression of my emotion. And over time, I have come to cherish my Divine Mother Self. Now entering menopause, I hope to know myself as the Divine Grandmother.
The Change doesn’t come quickly. It is a process. I recognized this after reading Women Who Run With the Wolves.

April 5, 2009
I am undergoing a transformation. I am entering the change…and it is truly changing my life. My relationship with my sisters is improved. And although I rarely write, rarely blog, rarely market, all the old seeds are coming to fruit.

Dreams are lucid, exploring my inner psyche. I am being initiated into the grandmother’s council and I love it.

I type this on a new computer. The old died, like so much passing in my life…Sara, Auntie, Karen …death leads to birth. The winds of change clear the way for the new.

Most profound of all is my ability to instantly manifest. What I think becomes. If I desire something greatly enough, it manifests. I have had little need to confront my worries as they absolve before me. I am in the state of realization. Becoming the Magdalen, the way to the divine.

The polarity of good and evil does not exist in my world. All is of joy. All is of love. All is well. Lessons cloaked in distasteful garb are often the most profound. Rarely is it difficult now. I move into my sage-hood with ease.

Estes relates stories as a means to understand the psyche. I see great connection with LoveDance® and her rendition of the archetypal stories. I naturally wrote into the story the maiden, the child-self, the queen/bride, the king/groom, the mage and the gardener. Perhaps this is why the book touches so many on such a deep level. Story heals souls.

I am so very well, so very blessed. Gratitude has become a way of life. Love is my essence. The world is opening to receive me and I am prepared to bare all to be Joy.

And here in this book, I bare all and you, my reader, are open to receive. Tonight I shall take the role of Crone in the triad that serves our women’s circle. A practice run as sage or the beginning of the next phase of my life…hmmm…

39. IN THE BEGINNING I WAS CATHOLIC

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

I was born Roman Catholic. My mother is full blooded Italian. My father is Heinz 57—a blend of English, Irish, Welsh, and maybe a little African because us girls got our bottoms from somewhere more exotic. And there is that old photo of my great-great-great grandparents with seven or eight children and one is black. Who knows?

So we were Catholic. Well, all except Dad. He wasn’t anything of the religious persuasion. Dad believes in what is right in front of him. Not a spiritual person, but his doubt allowed me at least to be open to other possibilities. He wonders why I am so different than my sisters. I believe it was a combination of my mother’s faith and his doubt.

Mom and Dad eloped in March of 1960. She thought she was pregnant with me. She wasn’t. I came the next year. She feels she cheated herself out of a big Italian wedding, but she did get Dad to the local priest. And he took lessons so they could be married in the church. By that time she WAS pregnant with me—very, very pregnant. She tells the story that the priest liked to imbibe and in his drunken state whispered to Dad that he didn’t have to go through with this to which Mom exclaimed, “Father, I’m the Catholic!”

Philadelphia, 1961

So we were all duly christened. I still have my tiny christening gown. And I went to catechism. I loved school, so the classes were nice enough. The church was very pretty. Our Lady of Perpetual Help. A lovely statue of the Virgin Mary all dressed in light blue graced the church. She was very pretty and her baby—Jesus—was very sweet. I loved dressing up in my frilly frocks, hats and gloves and on special holidays, I had a little purse. And every mass, we would get up and down and up and down while the priest chanted in Latin, and then there would be a special moment when all the adults and the big kids got up and reverently made their way to the front of the church and then the priest would give them a cookie!

I really wanted to be part of the church. And you had to learn about being Catholic in order to partake in holy communion. That’s what they called the cookie. I found out later it was a wafer-thin cracker that tasted like sour grape juice and stuck to roof of your mouth if you tried to talk which was why you had to be quiet.

The nuns were very strict. And they didn’t like me asking questions.

“Why do I need to be bad in order to talk to the priest?” I was having trouble figuring out what I was going to confess.
“Why does the priest have to talk to God for me?” I talked to God directly and He talked to me. And the one they called His Son, well, he was my playmate.

But in order to partake in your first communion, you had to go to confession, which meant you had to tell the priest something you did wrong. I wracked my little brain for something. Then right before my first confession, I did it. I was bad. I gave my little sister less than half of the cookie I had saved from Brownies. I did it on purpose which is a greater sin, but I had to tell that priest something!

Finally, I got to receive holy communion. And Mommy was so happy and my grandparents made such a fuss. And then I don’t remember going to church too often after that. Just Easter and Christmas.

It was because of Dad. He didn’t like us to be away so long every Sunday. That was his day with us and he wasn’t going to share us with God. By the time, we were teenagers, he wasn’t so possessive as long as church didn’t interfere with dinner and especially Monday night football. Which was a bit of a problem for us as Mormons because Monday night is Family Home Evening and it’s hard to have lessons with the TV blaring. It was harder on us to be Mormon than Catholic. It’s not just because Catholics understand football. It’s because Mormons feel sorry for a family without the priesthood in the house. And Dad wasn’t joining!

Mom was a joiner. She loved community in any form and the Catholic Church provided community for its parishioners. And when we could no longer go to mass easily (we moved even farther from church when I was in sixth grade) the Mormon church provided the community she desired. Plus she wasn’t letting her daughters alone with those darn missionaries—law of chastity or not!