spiritual

25. EVERLASTING BIRTH PANGS

Late in spring, Steve and I were at Lowes buying veggies for the garden. He left me with a cart full of plants to go get something in the warehouse…a dangerous thing cause I LOVE flowers. Some dahlias called so I knelt to find the one that wanted to come home with me when I was approached by a tiny, slightly bent, very wrinkled, delightfully enthusiastic ancient Native American woman.

“Come, come. You must see these flowers.” She beckoned pushing a walker cart. I was enchanted by her energy and followed her. “These are the flowers for you.”

She showed me some bright yellow and pink annuals. “Touch them,” she insisted. The flowers were dry, perfectly preserved. I was amazed. “Strawflowers!” She exclaimed. “They’re for you.” I yearned to give her a big hug, but she was so tiny and fragile, I just caressed her shoulder as I thanked her. How could I not buy one?

So I planted a bright yellow strawflower in front and forgot about it…until last Memorial Day. I was on my way to finish my sculpture…and had an uneasy feeling all weekend. Driving over to Grandmother Kathy’s house filled with a familiar feeling of anticipation peppered by trepidation, I was transported back to 1984 driving to UCLA to pick up my first born from the NICU, excited but a little scared. My whole life would change when I brought him home. And now my life was changing again.

I cried the moment Kathy hugged me. “What’s wrong?” About to bring home another life changing creation, I knew that I would never be the same again.

My sculpture came out of the kiln relatively unscathed (a slight crack in the horse’s neck and her left knee…we all have birthmarks and scars, don’t we?) The retouch staining went well, but alas Kathy did not have the right glue to attach the crystal amethyst wings to the ceramic back of the woman so off we went to Lowes.

And Kathy led me right over to a lovely display of strawflowers. “Do you know what these are?” I nodded, as a matter of fact I did, and shared the story of the ancient flower woman with her. She was very excited and after getting the glue and another strawflower plant for each of us, we headed back to her house to attach the wings.

As we waited for the glue to dry, Kathy brought out an essential oil…Helichrysum…she said was from strawflower…yet I knew in holding the tiny vial…that wasn’t quite right…I envisioned a rougher plant… I was hesitant to smell it…She wondered why and I explained that certain odors are powerful memory inducers for me…finally I did…

…and I was in the tomb anointing Yeshua’s hands and feet. Then I went further back to just before the Seder…opening the alabaster jar, Judas reacted to the scent of the helichrysum…not the spikenard, frankincense or myrrh, but the helichrysum because…it was used to heal wounds, to revive…to resurrect…and now he had to do what was asked of him…he didn’t believe and the others, well, they didn’t know what was going on…Then I saw myself well before that last Passover collecting tiny dried yellow flowers from a rough lavender looking plant and simmering them in olive oil until the essence was extracted….Tears poured down my cheeks as I remembered…

Kathy was amazed…she called the essence “everlasting” Afterwards I looked it up online (I love my smart phone!) and found the plant from which the oil is derived….it looked like what I envisioned and the Latin name is “Immortelle”…

I found research on helichrysum for use in gingivitis. I decided to try it on my gums…Steve’s reaction to the smell was strong…he said it made him feel “very upset… please don’t use it again, please” My Mom found it healing, so much so just smelling it relieved a headache… Kathy had the same reaction as Mom…

Now once again I’m astride two worlds…as Jarys would say…the past and the present. Or if there is no time…I’m floating in my river of consciousness between the banks of what was and what will be.

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Available on Amazon

23. PRECIOUS

I’ve always felt precious. My mother called me her precious daughter until the day she died. My father treats me as if I am a precious gift. My grandparents beheld me with preciousness in their gaze. My aunt and uncle speak of their brief time with me as precious. And I have always felt life is precious. That my relationship with Steve is precious. That my children are precious gifts to me.

So how can preciousness and unworthiness live in one being? Because we live in a dualistic world. We are both self and other. We are both light and dark. We are both divine and human. We are in duality. In duality, we develop our sense of self, our egos. Our ego serves to differentiate us from others. Only when we drop the veil of ego can we be one with all that is. Yet being human, we need differentiation to appreciate connection.

My parents perceived my divine light. And I knew myself as precious until I developed my ego. Then under the veil of ego, I felt separation from all that is and began to feel unworthy. I could no longer perceive my own divine light.

While cleaning a stained-glass lamp, it came to me. The inner light was dull due to the dust of time. Yet polishing the outside of the glass did little to increase the brightness of the light. I had to polish the inside of the glass. Only then did the light shine with its true brilliance.

Same with us. We work so hard polishing our outer selves. Perfecting our appearances, our bodies, our faces, our clothes, the cars we drive, the houses we live in, the people we hang out with, the money in the bank, the roles we play…lots of time polishing our outsides… Never quite good enough always striving for more. Thinner, younger, prettier, stronger, richer, more successful.

Yet until we dive deep within to rediscover our preciousness do we spend time polishing our inner selves. Removing the dust accumulated over the years…the childhood traumas we reflexively relive, the generational thinking we carry as karmic imprints, the old paradigm beliefs we are afraid to give up…until we polish our inner selves does our divine light shine brightly enough for us to see it reflected in the world. In the faces of our family and friends, in our works, in our connection with the earth, in all of our lives.

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Available on Amazon

22. IN THE BEGINNING

So now that I’ve begun at the end, it’s time to go back to the beginning.

In the beginning, there was the One. It just was. No space, no time, no differentiation of any other. Then there was desire. Desire to know itself. Desire to know itself as more. Then there was the Word, the thought expressed. Creation became envisioned. First the One had to understand itself as a Self. The One as Self and then the realization that there are no others. So Self decided to define itself. The concept of space emerged as Self moved its consciousness to the boundaries of Self.

As Self noted that it knew more about its existence then it had in the beginning, time became relevant. Then the One created form. Form as a means to embody space and time. Then the One split into two. The One was like the light and the second aspect of itself was like the dark shadow of the light. Now the One had multiplied with clear differentiation between Itself and the Other. The Light One and the Dark One desired to know themselves as more and began to differentiate into many aspects of Self, each becoming more fragmented from the original One.

Oops…I went a little far back. In 2001, I had this vision, no more like a memory of being One. Like I could remember being part of The One. And then separate. My remembrance of Oneness, I felt whole, holy, complete and then…the separation and I felt less than, incomplete, yearning for more. And in that remembrance, I knew where my sense of unworthiness began. I came in with it and it’s been going on for a very long time.

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Available on Amazon

18. THE 11:11 PORTALS

Since the beginning of 2011, the 11th of each month has felt…well, different. After the Japanese earthquake, I was sure I wasn’t the only one feeling the 11th. So I googled it and found the 11th of each month described as vibrational portals leading to 11-11-11. On 4-11-11, I felt compelled to hold ceremony so I called up Grandmother Kathy and took her to the beach.

In sacred ceremony, we gifted the ocean with the intention of healing the earth. I felt this intense energy coming from the sun…no actually through the sun and recognized the galactic center blessing us. On the wet low tide sands, I danced the sacred union of Father Sun and Mother Earth…what an amazing experience!
Lately, I keep seeing multiples of 11 every time I look at the clock (11, 22, 33, 44). I looked up the significance of these master numbers and calculated my numerology number by birth date and it is 22…but still this doesn’t settle my soul…something more is up.

On Monday, I awoke with a vague melancholy. Then I realized the date…7-11-11…and felt compelled to hold ceremony again…but what? Trusting all would be well I opened my journal in hopes of inspiration and…. it came to me…

…These portals are DNA activations! In alignment with the chakra’s…the first three were not as noticeable to me (I can only guess that these layers are well activated by Genesis Gold®), the fourth felt like a celebration of the heart chakra…Love… the fifth and sixth were subtle, yet this seventh was in alignment with work I’ve been doing regarding the Pineal gland. And I have always known the crown chakra to be a connection to the heavens, the multi-dimensional universe. Perhaps why we bow our head in prayer, exposing our crowns to the mouth of God.

So on 7-11-11 at 11:11 dressed in violets, I lay under my oak tree to meditate.

And for the first time since I was a child, I felt the presence of Father God. He spoke to me. Explaining that it took this long for me to bond well with the Divine Mother, to discover my truth and transform from human doing to human being…to live as the embodiment of the Divine Daughter and encompass Divine Mother energy into my life with deep honoring of the Divine Grandmother.

He showed me how easily I partnered with the Divine Masculine in Steve and received it in other men. How bravely I tried to heal my relationship with my father …yet still I searched for guidance from the Divine Father.

In answer to my heart prayers of healing the father wound, He came.

And showed me, me as light! A juicy brilliant orange-red began the light show and I felt filled from root to belly…hormonally rejuvenated. Then lime green darkening to peridot as the light rose from solar plexus to heart. The greens deepened to a glorious teal, fluid and dancing with lovely lilac in the center…my heart filled. Then my throat alighted in clear blue, brilliant as the sky and here where I hold trepidation, finally healed by the blue light of truth. Then my head filled with violet, not purple of my youth, but a deep violet that circled around to red and became fuchsia. My new auric color! He showed me that I’ve come full circle and begin again at 50.

The communication was long and deep. For I saw my own DNA dancing. Not the double helix formation but a spiraling spherical star of DNA, many layers deep, no, not layers, He said, not stacked but intertwined, and I looked deeper and saw brilliant strands dancing figure eights of infinity, meeting in the center of the star sphere, some switching partners, some dancing in triplets…Seven lit up brilliantly…four more dancing in the shadows, and the last yet to be enlightened.

All the while Father God spoke to me. He explained how he watched over me all this time through the eyes of crow. My deep connection to this magical black bird that so many fear…it was serving My Father. The one I turned away from so long ago.

No judgment, no sorrow during this glorious reunion with My Father. Only light and love. Exactly what I ask for every time I feel fear. That my fear be lifted and I be filled with light and love. And now I know it has been Him…answering my prayers.

Oh, I am still very much one with My Mother. She flows through me….and I felt Her great Joy as I received Him. She held me in her arms as She presented me, Her Divine Daughter, to My Father. I am so blessed.

I arose at 11:55, 44 minutes in divine communication. I am profoundly affected…the light was so healing…I know now what Yeshua meant by My Father and I are One.

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Available on Amazon

17. BLOSSOMING SPIRIT

Every year my women’s circle holds a retreat. In 2010, I felt this great need for freedom by the time we chose our theme. The group asked me to intuitively choose a card from the Triple Goddess Deck. I used another woman’s Kuan Yin necklace to act as a pendulum. The card chosen was Karmic Imprints and it was all about freedom—freedom from ancestral imprinting and your shadow. The work was deep and dark and powerful. What an amazing life changing retreat. That is where I finally let go of the last of my judgment. Finally let go of Bulimic Deb.

This year before we met for our first planning meeting, crow left me a feather…Bringer of the Triple Goddess Tarot Cards, I tied the triple goddess colors of white, red, and black around the crow feather and the eldest “crone” of our circle used the feather to divine the card. Blossoming Spirit was chosen—card number 5, the hierophant—with a strong rejuvenation theme. Just what I dreamt for our next retreat.

For three weeks, I asked crow for another feather having given up the beautiful one to the circle. And only after I abandoned the search to go on a carefree run with my dog Charlie did I find a black and white feather…balance…and then crow graced me with a pure black feather under the orange tree—where I pick sunshine to consume every morning before greeting my animals and old man crow!

Some of us felt that to truly birth ourselves anew as Blossoming Spirit, we must identify what is golden in the Divine Masculine. Yet most of the circle struggled with patriarchy. The emotional energy was so profound that I can remember to this day who was at the meeting, where they sat, what they wore, what they said. I watched as a few of the women took on the warrior energy while some just left their bodies. I was almost tempted to gather them into a protective circle of white light, when I felt guided to just observe.

After witnessing their reaction, I took my heavy heart to my beloved husband who shone some divine masculine light of wisdom upon me. Then I sat in counsel with my higher self, consulted with wise women and wondered when this Father Wound would be finally healed. For Blossoming Spirit to emerge at the fall equinox, balance must be reached.

It is time to heal the split with the Divine Masculine. I began this work exactly a year ago, composing and publishing two articles regarding the Divine Masculine before I was hit with Death…there my focus lie for months through the Karmic Imprint retreat and well after as I released all that no longer served my soul.

The summer before, I had an amazing dream that reminded me of an aspect of the Divine Masculine that has been forgotten…

I enter the Home Depot through the lumber department to get to the garden center. I’m going to buy jasmine. The center of the Home Depot is a raised platform and as I ascend the steps to the platform, a great Golden Bear comes through the door. It’s huge, larger than life, a golden orange color, translucent, brilliantly colored like a child’s crayon, surreal. I’m the only one to see it. It snuffles around the entry and I crouch down on the steps. It snuffles its way over to me. And snuffles my hair, my face, my neck. Then taps a great claw over my right eye, then over my third eye, again and again. Then it hunkers down over me like a mother bear over a cub. Yet I know this bear is male. I feel loved and protected like when Steve throws a leg over me, pulls me into his body—trapped by love. Trapped under the bear, I am secure, feeling the soft fur of its belly, the weight of its body, the warmth, the mass…protected in a golden cave of bear energy. Then the bear transforms into a…man. I can feel his naked body, the roughness of his hair, the shift in weight, mass, warmth from bear to man. We stand and face each other. I am WOMAN and He is MAN…all men, naked, dark skin and hair like a Mediterranean man. We take each other’s hands and then he disappears. A woman friend of mine says… “That is the forgotten aspect of the Divine Masculine.” And I wake up.

When I lie in Steve’s arms, his leg pressing over mine—the weight, heat and furriness comfortable, secure, I am very grateful to have found my home in his heart. I live with the Golden Bear energy of the Divine Masculine.

Although I have taken steps to heal my relationship with my own father and it’s going well, the Divine Masculine is up again…wanting to be healed in my soul, in the collective feminine, in the world…

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Available on Amazon

16. SEEDS OF INTENTION

At the fall meeting of the Ojai Grandmother’s Council, we were reminded of the seeds of intention that we planted in the spring. Some could not remember their intentions, some remembered but did not tend them. I was acutely aware of mine. My birthday is on the Spring Equinox and every year I plant seeds of intention with the hopes of a great harvest come fall. That year my intention was to be open to receive abundance.

Oh, I have much. My life is very rich. A beautiful home, fertile land, healthy, happy children, an amazing relationship with my beloved husband, a fulfilling healthcare practice, yet I feel that there is more…that I am to go out into the world and share my wisdom…and to do that…I need resources…money and people to help…and although my business pays the bills, there is debt incurred to build the practice, to manufacture Genesis Gold®…and my book—LoveDance®—waiting for release.

Since planting my seeds of intention, I’d been acutely aware of the abundance in my life, living in gratitude as the universe has seen fit to challenge me…with death, and loss, and sacrifice. As if I had to empty my Soul Purse over and over to make room for the abundance to come.

That night… I have sequence of five dreams…

All the time I’m dreaming, I’m lucid. I fall in and out of sleep after a tremendous hot flash at 12:30—three hours after I fell asleep—and spend time rolling around considering what I should do about my hormonal challenge…then set my intention to know what it’s all about at the soul level and fall asleep…

…The first dream opens with a gathering of women in a great big house. I’m trying to settle in and my roommate shows up. One of my young patients and she’s distraught, hands me her pants. She needs another pair just like them. I tell her pants are expensive in…Italy…wow, that’s where we are!… and she hands me $50. I look at the pants…olive green suede polyester nothing wrong with them except a blood stain at the crotch. She is mortified that she started her period…this is the patient I saw last week who missed her period…I explain she can wash them out, but she will never wear them again—stained with women’s blood…I am saddened by her shame, I want to make it better for her…and then I see that she is me as a girl not at peace with my femininity and all women afraid they are unclean as the world has treated them. And I feel a deep sense of gratitude for finally embracing my feminine power…

…and the dream shifts. I’m with the same gathering, but so crowded, too many women… A fake sense of feminine power emanates from them—over inflated, dangerous—a roomful of women wearing pants under skirts. I need to get away. But it’s so crowded. Finally, I remember I can fly! I start to push off away from the crowded staircase…and another woman, one from my women’s circle…says “Hold her!” I am chased by two women, struggling to gain altitude through the crowded place, they grasp my trailing legs, but cannot catch me. I feel light but too low…the energy is one of a dog teasing its owners into a game of chase– I head for the light, but they close the opening before I can fly there…I’m trapped in a great big tent! …Lucid, I try to wake up…and realize until I get the message of the dream sequence, I’m not going anywhere…I fly up through ropes, tight ropes. Below me, all the women I’ve gotten involved with in this life and beyond—from girls scouts, to sorority sisters, to the nurse practitioners I led, and the women’s circle, the grandmothers, and interspersed are the women gurus who wove in and out of my life these past 13 years…all who wanted me to join them, to lead them… …my lucid self so happy to be flying again (I haven’t flown in my dreams since the women’s retreat just before the Autumn Equinox where we worked on our karmic imprints)…How funny that my subconscious traps me in a circus tent with crazy women. I laugh…

….and slip into another dream. A great gathering of all my dead patients. Everyone’s there…Eddie in the background—smoking! —Lacy, Michael, many whose names I’ve forgotten but not their faces—whole and healthy—and their energy. All doing whatever they please…peace emanates from them. The last patient I buried is there too. A sense of guilt carried from my waking world trickles into my dreamtime. Barbara is the spokeswoman and she’s explaining where Anna is on her spirit path so soon after her death. “There is no need for regret. You danced your best dance with each of us. We are where we need to be at this time in human consciousness.” Gran’s there too. And she is walking very strangely…like she’s in a space suit, sort of praying mantis like. I wonder if her walker would help, and Gran apologizes…it’s broken, how difficult it is to move on earth, so much easier over there. I have a catalog in my hands and pick out a handicap toilet for her…pink and orange!…which seems silly since I know Gran isn’t staying…and feel bad that we didn’t make these accommodations for her while she was alive. I show her the toilet. “I never had such a bright toilet!” she says, “but I don’t think I’ll need one. I’m not staying, dear. This is the first time you let me in.” True, she has visited Steve many times. I inquire about the others. She says “I have very nice visits with Steve, but the rest are harder.” I hope she isn’t spending too much time and effort trying to contact those who are not ready to receive her. She laughs and says, no she is very busy over there, but not to worry. Time is not an issue for her anymore and effort, well it is easier to be in the presence of love than fear… In my observer, lucid dreamer state, I want to spend more time with the dead, knowing it’s precious…it’s the first time I’ve dreamt of Gran and she feels so real…our conversations though bizarre yet so genuine. The only one I miss in the dreams is Hope…she’s not with the grateful dead…but I’m not sad. I know my beloved Great Dane, my Hope, is where she belongs…

…then I’m on a huge field, tossing a yellow grass-stained nerf football to a black dog and a blond boy. Every pass, they switch off, I’m not a good thrower and neither of them catch well. We pass through many other people’s games/lives, communicate with them and move on. All are men and boys…fathers and sons. Playing amongst a group of black men and boys, one of which compliments my butt as I bend over the tub to find the dog tied up like a broken doll almost fetal like. I keep finding its limp body left behind with the ball underwater. At first I dismiss the comment as I did in my youth with an excuse and then I replay the scene and graciously thank the man and he swells and merges with the other black men, their sons receiving their vibration as the sacred feminine received them…back to the fetal dog and used up ball left underwater…I realize the boy has moved on… this boy-dog issue I know is mine…my inner boy child leaving me and the spirit dog connecting him to the otherworld left behind…this is part of the healing the divine masculine within me…

…then I’m back in the house—my recurring house dream. Usually in the “house” dream, I am so frustrated…my sisters keep me from getting what I need to get done, I’m always cooking or cleaning and everything is a disaster…this time I am just watching while being in the midst of them…like I’m watching a home movie while being in it … this time, instead of wandering the never-ending rooms, and halls, I stay in the kitchen-family room where all the family is gathered. It’s our rental, yet I have no sense of ownership… The family has rented it before and now have a disaster with the microwave. I am surprised I am not making a fuss that they are trying to microwave a whole chicken… Steve even looks to me for a response, but it is like I am just observing, it’s all very funny and we’re playing our silly parts again and again with the same outcome, I even tease about some goofy fake fur pants I plan to get my brother-in-law, and my fashionable sister looks at me horrified… Later I am to meet Steve for a trip, he’s coming back to the house to pick me up, but my sister needs my car to go to work…and she’s dressed in these too big jeans, strange polka dot hose and heels, a vest she made up out of our dead PopPop’s pajama top and a nice leather jacket on top of it all. I send her out with my blessing, but need to get my purse out of the car because it has everything I need to go away with Steve. I’m surprised at the floppy little purse that seems so empty (my violet soul purse with a golden clasp)…I never carry purses in my dream…always have what I need somewhere on me… And then I am my daughter meeting her beloved to go to Hawaii. ..and I realize all is superfluous because I must get ready for a wedding…

Then I wake up!

The energy of the dreams was curiosity…taking a trip down the rabbit hole of my subconscious…and at times I try to get out but I know it’s all a dream and stay to learn more. There’s no fear, just bemusement. I know I am growing while in the dark dream state…I intended this before falling asleep …I know these dreams represent what I have cleared from my soul purse…my fears of being a woman, my tendencies to get captured by others and taken advantage of, the shame of failing in my healing practice, letting go of the boy to allow room for the divine masculine, being with my family all the interior mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, sons and not being smothered by my relationships with them but seeing the humor in life and being gracious with my humanity…then going on the next stage of my soul journey, preparing to experience the sacred marriage of divine feminine and divine masculine within me in the heart of the earth…starting all over again like newlyweds… The last sequence with the empty purse (I never dream of purses!) with Hope not part of the dead but so deeply embedded in my soul, not something to be cleared out of my soul “purse”… something to keep always.

This crazy dream sequence was in fact…the past six months of soul work from the time I planted the seed of intention to be open to receive abundance…through all the work of clearing out all that doesn’t serve me, and making room for a great harvest, a filling up of soul…a completeness of self…whole, finally to be whole.

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Available on Amazon

12. PARTNERING WITH MY PATIENTS

After nine years of working as an employee first at an urgent care then with an ob-gyn, I had a dream…to start my own holistic health care practice.

So I left a private practice seeing 27 or more patients a day as an employee to slow down and spend quality time with my own patients; time that they gratefully compensated me for and then submitted their completed bill of services to their own insurance. Finally I was independent of the insurance industry. Soon a trend began as patients invested in their care became increasingly more responsible for their health.

My dearest patients supported my entrepreneurial nature by following me into my new integrative medical practice—Full Circle Family Health. One day I was evaluating a woman with postmenopausal bleeding and had an uneasy feeling. A few years earlier my intuition led me to discover a rare growth on her liver. She trusted my feelings and did not hesitate to agree to an ultrasound. That’s when we discovered the tumor.

I had diagnosed patients with cancer before. I had even lost a few to the disease. But this beloved patient was different. Her cancer became our dance floor. I learned to partner with Barbara to the rhythm of her dis-ease, to the changing beat of her desire, to the symphony of her life’s purpose. I held nothing back, dancing with her through choices that I may not have chosen, orchestrating a care plan that fit her needs—physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I researched every option, conventional and alternative. She fought the good fight, but in the end…she showed me how to slow dance.

On the morning of her death, I felt Barbara as a bubble of delight floating through me. Not an hour later, her daughter called to tell me she had just passed. For the first time in 25 years of healing, I experienced the grace of death.

Like most health care professionals, I had viewed death of a patient as a failure and could not fully receive the gift of their passing. But hers, I embraced. I surrendered to loving her as a person, to getting close to her family, to being a part of her circle—truly Full Circle Family Health.

At the funeral, others commended me for coming. How could I not? I came to honor her, to support her family and to let her go. Like many of her loved ones, I shared my thoughts. Mostly I thanked her delightful spirit, free now from pain playing with her little grandson.
This is the way it used to be. Before insurance carriers and malpractice, we used to get involved with our patients. We knew their families, we birthed them, we helped them get through tough times in their lives, and we buried them. We understood the circle of life. They understood too. We respected one another; we were part of a community.

As I dance my dreams into reality, they expand to encompass all I love. Transforming my health care practice into one that supports my relationships, my health and my soul purpose—my LoveDance®—has allowed me to model a healthy balanced life which helps my patients achieve their goals. And those who are ripe for healing arrive from across the globe. They come because I dance their dance.

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Available on Amazon

11. MAY I HAVE THIS DANCE?

Sultry music warms the desert air. And I’ve been dancing—Brazilian Samba—all night. Once, twice with my beloved, but dancing is not his thing. It’s mine. I cannot keep still when the drum calls. I dance with whoever asks. Men, women, children…or just with the drummer.

All my sisters and my mother came with me to this Cinco de Mayo celebration in the rosy desert glow of Palm Springs. Our dear friends invited us to partake of their Mexican feast, margaritas and music. Most of the celebrants are gay…and I am in heaven with no shortage of dance partners. Although my mother ventured onto the dance floor, my sisters kept to themselves, later wondering why they danced so little. At the intermission, the band leader told me why.

He had put on some recorded music and the other dancers left. Still captivated by the energy, I stayed. He asked me to dance. When I slipped into his arms, he made a comment, “Your body is perfect for dancing.”

And I said, “My husband is right over there.”

He laughed. “Forgive me. I have been watching you dance all night. Partnering with dancers of all abilities. And each one you received and danced with beautifully. Your body is perfect for dancing.”

Perhaps he’s right. I have yet to encounter a person I cannot dance with. I just follow their lead. They may be awkward or shy or overly trained in a particular style of dance that may not match the music. It doesn’t matter. Somehow their inner dancer comes out to dance with me.

Years ago, I attended a Science and Consciousness conference in New Mexico. The conference began with Dances of Universal Peace. A large group of us circled around a makeshift band of musicians with drums, flutes and stringed instruments. I was enchanted. The music was so enticing. I danced joyously with each and every one in the circle. And many people approached me afterwards complimenting me on my dancing. “Are you a professional dancer?” I just laughed. Far from it.

I never thought of myself as a dancer. In fact, my husband used to tease that I danced to the beat of a different drummer. But I didn’t care, enjoying the music, the camaraderie, the energy. I called my guru friend. I thought Anika would love the dances, especially since she had been taking ballroom dancing and had started dancing competitively. She huffed at the idea that anyone would think I was a professional dancer. “You’ve had no training!”

Hmm. I didn’t know what to say. But since then I have had many people express enchantment at my dancing. Then I wrote LoveDance® and finally understood.

Dancing is my way of connecting with the energy. A means of celebration, of expressing my feelings, of being present. And life is a dance of love. Steve suggested that LoveDance® is my expression of Self. Love is at the center of the triad of Relationships, Soul Purpose, and Health. I include Health because as a Holistic Nurse Practitioner, Health of Body, Mind, and Soul is paramount in the Process of Enlightenment. It is not enough for me to talk…but to walk my talk…or rather…to dance my truth!

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Available on Amazon

9. SPIRITUAL GURUS

After meeting Annette, I started to barter services with other spiritual gurus. To me they were gurus. They had a name for their gifts, unabashedly used the energy and charged a great deal for their services. It’s true that I used my intuition to diagnose and treat my patients. They trusted me or rather my intuition. And I had diagnostic tests to “prove my knowing”. Annette said I was still in the closet.

“How do you think you diagnose them so easily?”

When I started my private practice, I wasn’t ready to admit that I used the energies to diagnose my patients. But it was true that none of my colleagues seemed to be able to “hear” the carotid bruits that only Dopplers detected. Nor could they “smell” the cancer in our patients later confirmed by pathology. Even the gynecologist I worked with could not “feel” the cysts that he could only find with a laparoscope. One physician would perform surgery based on my “findings”. He did not wish for the others to know, but when I described tumors to a tenth of a centimeter that he found in the operating room, he too was a believer. Yet I had not come out to them.

So I saw one of Annette’s colleagues. She too was hormonally challenged, one of the most physically frail people I had ever met. More ether than substance. I was curious as to her “abilities”, yet certainly did not wish to trade my strength and vitality for her ethereal experiences. It’s as if she could not physically hold all the energy she was bringing in to this dimension. She’s not the only one, just my first encounter.

So after I got her hormonally balanced, I went to her for a session. I did not know what to expect. Annette’s sessions reminded me of Healing Touch—an energy therapy started by holistic nurses to certify health care professionals. Anika’s sessions were more like channelling. And she said, that never before had so much information came in. She was not the only energy healer/channel that related amazing transmissions during our time together. I thought it was them. My mother said it was me.

As soon as I sat in front of Anika, I felt a winged presence behind me. Anika described it as a seraph. I felt embraced, held, protected. I “heard” the being’s name—Constantina—and it “said” she had been with me since the beginning. Although Anika related some of this through her channelling, my own imagery and sensory experience filled in the gaps, making this very real for me. “Constantina” assured me that I was not to worry about Steve. I was to step forth on the path before me and trust that he would follow.

What a great relief to have my greatest fear addressed. I was afraid that if I forged ahead on my spiritual journey that I would leave my beloved behind. My fear was mirrored in my husband’s distrust of Anika and the other spiritual gurus to follow. He tolerated Annette but she respected him. The others did not. Some even advised that if I was to achieve enlightenment in this lifetime that I had to leave him. I left them instead.

One thing I know is Love. My husband loves me with all his heart and I love him. If this was the right path, then we would take it together. Well, more like in tandem. Rather me going first and him following. He told me once that he was a gatekeeper. He felt his job was to be sure that everyone he loved got through. He knew I was a leader. He encouraged me to grow, to explore, to learn, to make change. He said if I kept looking back for him, we would never get anywhere.

Now at the time, I felt held back by my love. But the more I got to know the gurus, the more I realized that their “gifts” were not worth all they gave up. Most of these women lived alone. They did not have significant others in their lives—no husbands, no lovers, no close friends, no children. They had left everything they knew to follow their path.

I felt so strongly that everything I knew and loved were part of me. I was willing to go first, to lead the way, but I vowed not to leave them behind. Constantina’s message was very reassuring. Since then I have come to see that leading is flying in triangular formation like a flock of geese. One goose is up front with a clear view of where the flock is going. All the rest of the geese are just flying nose to tail, trusting that the leaders know the way. I am not alone. The other outer geese are there. Sometimes that goose is my husband. Flying up from the rear to relieve me.

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Get your copy Now!

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Death and the White Light

Eddie. He came to me in the fall of 2002, diagnosed with lung cancer. His lawyer, a patient of mine, suggested he consult with me, as a clinical endocrine advisor in a research project using natural progesterone to treat cancer at the Sansum Medical Clinic. Cancer is not my specialty. I specialize in neuro-immune-endocrinology which I believe is at the core of most dis-ease. So I spent two hours going over his history, looking for signs of age-related decline that could be at the root of his illness, trying to understand why this brilliant man’s body was failing him at 52, and explaining the biochemistry of cancer as related to the complicated system of hormonal miscommunication with DNA.

Exuding enthusiasm, Eddie asked, “So you have something to balance my ligands?” He was brilliant, one of the only patients who understood the scientific lingo of my theories. He was even open to the psycho-spiritual roots of dis-ease, including the irony of being afflicted with cancer after inventing thermal implants to treat brain tumors.

In fact, I did have something for him—my Genesis Gold® formula to balance the hypothalamic orchestration of the neuro-immune-endocrine system—but, in theory only. After completing pilot studies the year before, my personal funds ran out and I struggled to find a manufacturer to mix even a small batch. Eddie took my hand and offered to help.

“No,” I protested, “you came here for me to help you.”

“Perhaps I came to help you. My cancer was a fortuitous portal for our meeting.”

Thus began our journey to manufacture my formula so he might partake of it. He truly believed he would be cured by my invention. In the meantime, I recommended a natural treatment regime, since he was opposed to traditional therapies, and spent much time counseling him and sharing many spiritual portals. He treated me as a beloved daughter, introducing me to colleagues who would forge the path to the birth my nutraceutical product. Becoming attached, I searched for cures for his cancer.

The day I brought the first bottle of Genesis Gold® to him, he smiled, beckoned me closer and whispered, “I knew you could do it.”

It was his last lucid moment. At the request of his family I had been coming to his lovely villa in the hills of Santa Barbara to help him die. As a nurse practitioner, I treated the walking well. Some patients had passed over the years, usually of old age, occasionally untimely, but not since being a neophyte nurse had I witnessed death.

After graduating nursing school in 1983, I worked on a surgical floor at UCLA Medical Center. We saw the sickest of patients—heart transplants, complete surgical resections of the bowels, lung resections. My first encounter with death was a young woman, my age, dying of pancreatic cancer. When I arrived on the night shift and saw her Do Not Resuscitate order, I knew her family and physicians had given up. Not me! I was not going to let her drown in her own secretions and stayed by her bedside suctioning her tracheostomy. Her intern refused to give me a permanent suction order so that I would take care of my other three patients, so I handed him the suction catheter and called the chief resident. My colleagues were appalled. No one called the chief in the middle of the night, especially not a nurse.

Amazingly, he wasn’t upset, but asked if I saw the DNR order. “Doctor, I’m not resuscitating her. I just don’t want her to be alone. I…” Seeing the intern escape down the hall, I tried to hang up on the chief.

“Oh, no, you don’t. We’re going to discuss why you can’t let her die.” I resisted, but he kept me on the phone until it was too late.

The charge nurse helped me prepare the young woman’s body for the morgue. And with tears, I was forced to let my patient go.

Twenty years later, I was not so resistant. Eddie’s family left me alone with him. I sat at his bedside and meditated on how I could help him pass. I had already counseled with each of his family members. When I thought of his recalcitrant son who had finally agreed to see his father after our phone conversation that morning, I felt a wave of gratitude. And it wasn’t mine, it was from Eddie. I opened my eyes.

His diminished energy, faded to non-existent in his limbs, now concentrated in his heart chakra, shimmered, and I gasped to see a funnel of light connect to him. He appeared to lift from his form—pure white light not the fiery red of his life force—and enter the conical shaped energy. Other light forms greeted him, ancestors and guides, passing him along to the end. And at the infinite end of this brilliant white light was pure Love. He was enveloped, embraced like long lost lovers, the encounter so intimate; I was torn between turning away in deference to such a private moment and watching in awe.

Suddenly, Eddie’s essence turned away from the Light and I was swept up to see from his perspective. It appeared as if the room where his body lay, even me at his bedside, existed in a fishbowl. The reality was the Light, the physical existence, an illusion. So peaceful, so blissful, the light was very familiar to me.

I remember calling in the White Light to protect my little sisters while I was away at kindergarten and invoking the same White Light to surround my own children whenever I dropped them off for school. If I would forget, my daughter would remind me, “Mommy, do the White Light,” and I would swaddle her and her brother in the protection of the Light that had always comforted me. In that eternal moment, I recalled how the same White Light seemed to bathe my patients and me during a healing and was the one I used to calm injured animals before treating them.

I’ve never been afraid of dying, although letting others go was difficult. My fear lay in being alone, separated from those I love by death. As a healer, I had taken a very long time to release my savior complex, to understand that I was not responsible for my patients’ illnesses, nor could I take credit for their cures. I was a midwife to their healing, holding the space in which they recovered or not—it’s always their choice.

That night after his son came to his bedside to say goodbye, Eddie died.

Two months later, I received one of my greatest openings and began writing my life’s work. Never a moment of writer’s block, it all just flowed in. The synchronicity of events, from the creative process, to publishing LOVEDANCE®, to going out in the world to market has been amazing. Still, I am learning to ask for help and whenever I feel resistant, I hear Eddie, “Perhaps I am here to help you,” and open to receive another’s assistance.

Witnessing the rehearsal of his death was Eddie’s final gift to me. Death is a passing through the veil of illusion and into the truth. There is nothing to fear.