I appreciate where I live and my relationship to the Earth and her creatures, here on the Sonoran Dessert.

I first experienced my relationship to the Earth and her children in New England (NE). At a very young age I would spend hours in the woods that abutted the cul-de-sac we lived on. There was a swamp and seven caves and I was small and skinny enough to slip in and play for hours, always with one of my dogs trailing along. I enjoyed my time with angels, fairies, gnomes, snakes, frogs, caterpillars, ducks – you name it. I played with them, saved them and tried to take them home. I remember wearing snakes wrapped around my legs as jewelry, and putting frogs in my pockets, and squishing butterflies in my hands (by accident of course). There and in those experiences I was instantly transported to my “essential self” for an afternoon and untethered from the confusion of home life.

It was during those early years I first had awareness of – my ability to communicate with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. I then forgot this ability in my late teens as life became more complicated and heady for me as I operated in my survival mode. I was distracted!

As I matured and traveled through many nature experiences in NE, my idea of myself and the natural world expanded and so did my consciousness of myself as One with All That Is. I remembered my essential self again in my early thirties during a long period of time I spent living in the woods and sleeping under the stars in a sleeping bag. I woke up during that period and haven’t gone back to sleep again! My essential shift from surviving to thriving was initiated. 
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Today my relationship with the natural world keeps me connected to my essential self. Sitting in nature, consciously connecting to my breath, and entering the silence between my thoughts gently opens my heart and relaxes my body. From this state I know myself – self-reliant, interdependent and free!

I had an email exchange today with a new client preparing to begin her journey of – remembering and realigning with her physical wellbeing. She has been in her state of dis-ease for twelve plus years now. The sharing below is a selection from a reply email to her despair of –  “no longer having any more positive energy left” and the “urgent feeling” that “things need to change for her quickly.” Haven’t we all, at one time or another, experienced feelings of – despair and urgencyand the terror that those feelings can bring up within us? I know I have. 

From our email exchange…

“I invite you to start going – neutral with your mental and emotional energies on the subject of your health. To mean, take your attention off what you think is wrong and place it on what is working now – in all areas of your life. Do not engage in discussions about your health. Instead, engage in your self-care tools and redirect your focus. Soothe yourself.”

“Your current reality is – a habitual vibrational set point within your mental, emotional energies. You need to release, to let go of your current mental and emotional habits. I will assist you with seeing your shadow patterns and you will need to use your will to move, to shift the patterns and set new ones in place. When you achieve this, you will – no longer vacillate between negative and positive attitudes, nor will your experience of reality.”

“Your current experience is happening within you and through your connection to your self-love and – Higher Self. It’s not happening to you and there is nothing to fix as you’re not broken. You are vibrating in a disconnect from your Broader Perspective. That’s the good news! You have power to allow – a shift in your vibrational frequency. However, you are not in charge of the timing or the how. You will have to let those two conditions go and – relax and allow where you are right now to be enough. You have been beating this beat of dis-ease for some time now. It will take some time to align with a new beat.”

“Remember… Your current realty is – a habitual vibrational set point within your mental, emotional energies.”

“The first step in making a shift in your set point is to Love and appreciate yourself, and what is right now. You are doing the best you can right now on all subjects. Shift your perspective of needing to fix to – allowing yourself to grow and learn.”

“Moving in this way is the path to learning and growing so you can – allow your healing perspective to emerge. Through the experience, you know yourself as connected to Source energy and vibrating in the frequency of – your new vibrational set point.”

“Keep in mind you cannot place conditions on the timing or the how.  Conditions limit your connection to all possibilities. So let’s start  here; relax now and tell yourself – ‘Every day in every way I am getting  better, and better and better.’ In addition to keeping a gratitude journal, I want you to keep an evidence journal tracking how your life shows you – ‘better and better every day’.”

As a cosmic traveler, I love an adventure, always have! Thursday I left on a weekend adventure up to Northern AZ. As usual it was full of many delights and expansive experiences!
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That’s me in the pictures hiking off the beaten path in the Black Forest, in the Petrified Forest in Arizona.

The Black Forest Bed is one of four remarkable areas of petrified trees of Triassic age (i.e., dating from about 252 million to 201 million years ago). The rocks in this formation are some 213 million years old.

The hike into the forest bed was intense and intensely beautiful. For as far as the eye could see there was black petrified trees scattered over glorious pink and white bentonite clay, rolling hills and rocks.

The hike into the forest bed was intense and intensely beautiful. For as far as the eye could see there was black petrified trees scattered over glorious pink and white bentonite clay, rolling hills and rocks. My hiking companion and fellow cosmic traveler snapped lots of pictures as I was consumed in my experience and story of the energy of this place within me.

The rich pinks, black and white of the desert floor and rolling hills, peaks and valleys enlivened my child-like wonder and spirit of play and mischief. Once down in the forest bed I walked, ran, climbed up and down, investigated, feeling every raw emotion liberated. The obvious path quickly ended and the whole forest opened to us. So I built cairns, which brought on rolling eyes and a snicker of “how silly she is” from my trusted fellow cosmic traveler. But, I didn’t want to get lost.
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I was in my yummy spot of knowing myself – awe-inspired and at One

Aware of my natural sense of peace and connection with all things within and around me, I was fully enlivened. I became one with the shadows and lights of the forest within me and all around; past, present and future…the essence of Love. And today, I was also very aware of deep connection to feeling – disconnected in depression, sadness and doubt, energy of Love in shadow. I was aware of an aspect of myself visiting and reflected in the whole, that of an active storyteller of suffering.

Sometimes this happens when I am in conscious, expansive states in the story of peace, with joy and bliss coursing through my perspective and then a contrasting, darker perspective shows itself, like a family friend reminding me where I had traveled in times past and where an aspect of myself, still connected to the whole, knows separation from peace and the story of suffering. I experience separation, the loss or absence of something…the story of separation from some existential experience.
I know how to be here, in this dualistic process of connection to both peace and suffering from separation. I learned this process of peace and suffering first as a child in my parents’ story and reflection of me. Now in hindsight, I can recall the awakening perspective of separation and the terror of accepting depression, sadness and doubt as my story. Shadows that raised me, and arose within me became constant companions to negotiate with in order to feel the eventual loss of the feelings of peaceful connection to the light, joy and bliss. My petri dish of life experience was well underway.

As s cosmic traveler I went off on my own at a very young age and questioned my existence in the story of time, but first I practiced my process and created a life story from the shadows I had come to know.
I learned, through much self-reflection and growth, to question my process and remember myself whole again in the light of peaceful connection, joy and bliss. I know myself as an Alchemist of life experience, as frequencies of energy and connection.
Without my shadow story of separation and suffering, I would not know my Light, Liberation and Peaceful story of connection to the whole. In my story now, the ecstatic dance and alchemical process of shadow and light has polished me whole.

Much like my process, in geology, petrification is the alchemical process by which organic material is converted into a fossil through the replacement of the original organic material with minerals.
On this day, in the reflection of the Black Forest’s alchemical process of petrification, I remembered myself, whole in the human story and process of separation and connection – like the alchemical dance of duality with its deep tender tear of separation and return to its original space of the wholeness, beautiful and spacious as far as the eye can see.

My story today is one of awareness and personal responsibility. I know myself, whole as Love, and accept at times the stories of humanity that visit me and shape me like clay with the story of being separated, alone and isolated in suffering. I welcome these aspects of myself when they visit and, as a good host, I listen to their story and, when it’s time to go, I thank them for filling space and helping me return to my essential nature and story of eternal wellbeing.

Have you noticed as you mature (not age) and take full responsibility for ALL your experiences, a deep peace, intimacy and freedom inspires and uplifts within and all around?
I have noticed over time that in my commitment to – contemplate all my experiences (despair to bliss) as reflections of “my own operating pattern(s) or judgments”, distractions really – I relax into deep satisfying feelings of appreciation. Appreciation fuels for me – Source Connection, clarity, focus and flow.

In hindsight, I can see how silly it was for me to want a person, place or situation to be other than who or what it was. The intimate and freeing nature of going into the OneHeart, body, mind and Broader Source Perspective of ALL experience helped build my confidence in my own connection to Truth and self-reliance on Source and the Joy of sharing.“Sharing” from this connection became the way of a deepening intimacy and freedom for me. It also has me convinced that aging and maturing are NOT the same thing. Aging is not necessary and is even reversible – It’s just a belief. Maturing is – expansion, when one awakens consciousness and follows the path of clarity, courage and commitment to Truth!
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I would love to hear your perspectives on this – please share!