Fear part 2: Love and Intimacy, or; it turns out I was practicing Tantra and didn't even know it.

from NeilHague.com

I had an intense experience a few months ago, in which I channeled "Christ Consciousness" during a session with a client.  Normally, Jesus is not one of my guides, so I was surprised when he showed up, tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to ask my client if she prayed when she was in her most severe times of pain.  She responded that she did, but it didn't seem to help.  Jesus had me tell her that to receive Spirit (and healing) she couldn't direct the outcome, the delivery, or what was gifted to her.  

He then proceeded to talk quite a lot about the nature of healing, and the nature of being open to Spirit.  What was most amazing was that he showed me a  small glimpse of what it is like to be reunited with Spirit -- that is, with 100% acceptance, 100% love, no fear, no shame, no guilt.  It was startling, but so beautiful.  He talked about why people stray, what leads them into vice, and it was all about fear.  He said he never blamed anyone for making those choices, because he also remembered what it was like to be in a human body, and the sense of fear that comes from being separated from Spirit is so intense that it can cause people to seek the sense of unity in ways that aren't very good for us.  Various forms of intoxication, whether through drink, or drugs, or sex, are thus merely attempts to get beyond the sense of isolation we feel when we are stuck in our bodies.   

from lightworkers.org

Unfortunately, my client really wasn't able to HEAR his words, because she is very stuck in her narrow mindset of what being a "christian" means to her.  To this woman, the only way to connect with God is through an organized religion and very strict rules…. and even then, you might not pass the test, and be condemned forever.  

Ka-blam!  No heaven for you!

I have written before of "spiritual potato chips", that is, spiritual beliefs and practices that are filling and delicious, but not nutritive… they do not feed the soul.  What I came to understand through my work is that the practice of constant presence and self-awareness is what allows me to deeply listen to another person and to be able to hold space for whoever I am with, as well as to be able to connect to Spirit easily.  Coincidentally, I just read a book by Daniel Odier about the Tantra, and it turns out that I have been practicing tantric awareness without even knowing anything about it.  Deep intimacy can occur much more easily when you practice your awareness, and in this way, we can overcome the feeling of isolation through connection not only with other people, but with animals, the elements, all of nature that is there just waiting for us to wake up.

Intimacy is not the same as sex.  It is not the same as being nude.  We call it that, "getting intimate", but at that level only our bodies that are getting to know each other's shapes, scents, and preferences;  scars, lumps, stretch marks and other sources of personal body shame get in the way of this process.  We might hide ourselves in the dark, under the covers, instead of celebrating our glorious wholeness.  We do not expect to be accepted for what we look like underneath the makeup and the clothing, and this is painful to be sure.

Everyone is absolutely unique.  A most important thing is that every body deserves love and acceptance for exactly who and how they are in the moment.  When we do not get that from ourselves, or from a friend, or a partner, what happens to us?  We might internalize criticism in a self-hating emotional loop.  We may experience dis-ease and dysfunction of the physical system.  Our bodies are designed by nature to receive nurturing touch, and as many cruel scientific experiments have shown, we can even die without it.  

As a massage therapist, I see a huge variety in bodies.  Part of my service to humanity is to provide nurturing touch to people;  to witness their wholeness;  to hold space for their experience as they may wrestle with a whole raft of new emotions (and old, buried emotion) as the body releases what is stored.  For some clients, this is profoundly frightening -- and yet, the catharsis and reintegration of healthier attitudes and recognition of ourselves as resilient, strong, WHOLE people.  

I have another client who is going through some really intense transformation, which scares her.  She told me our sessions have become very "risky" for her emotionally-- and yet, she begged me, "Don't let me stop."   This process, despite its inherent risk to her carefully constructed world, is allowing her to look at herself intimately, perhaps for the first time, in a gentle, accepting, and loving way.  I am so grateful, and honored, to be a part of her process, even as she struggles, and I witness her.

Fear, part 1: Death

Death of Hyacinthe,  Jean Broc

American culture fears death.  Ya.  So what else is new?

We fear death so much that we have evolved a whole culture of evasion and avoidance and ignorance regarding it.  $10.4 BILLION dollars per year are spent on cosmetic surgery to avoid looking old.  $60 BILLION dollars per year spent on diets and related products.   Despite mounting evidence that we do, as a matter of fact, have a 100% chance of dying, most Americans seem to think that it can be banished to some dark corner never to be thought about; that by our constant evasion of it, perhaps Death will not catch us.

I recently had a somewhat disturbing series of encounters with a video-transfer client over several days.  His mid-20s son had recently passed away, and the client was absolutely desperate to recover some video footage of him.  He was insistent on maintaining his son's Facebook page, tracking down and retrieving all photos, video, and audio of his late son, and so he called me repeatedly for nearly a week, multiple times a day, rehashing over and over the various things he had tried to get this tape to play, and the repairs on all his video cameras, the mistakes he may or may not have made, storage issues, his bad luck:  on and on.  

Because it is my business to listen to people, I listened.  I heard his panic as he contemplated losing even a moment of his son's recorded life.  I could not make promises as far as being able to fix either his tape or recover the footage, but I told him I would do what I could.

When I met him in person to receive a precious videotape from him, I immediately felt his prickly energy.  His anxiety and terror were palpable even at a distance.  While I was able to repair his video tape so it could be played, I was not able to capture the footage (a common problem when video was shot with a camera whose recording heads were out of alignment).  This set off another chain of anguished and lengthy phone calls from him, asking me questions that I could not answer about various recording devices, and more to the point, just venting about his bad luck, his bad life, his unbearable loss.

At a certain point, I had to speak bluntly to this man:  "Look -- all of these things are ephemeral.  Photographs fade.  Recordings get erased.  Facebook will be go away.  Getting your videotape to play is not going to bring your son back to you.  (Long pause.) The best way to be with your son is to be quiet, and meditate, and ask him to be with you."

And then he cried out, "But the digital age was supposed to change all that!"

What exactly was it supposed to change?  Was the digital age supposed to erase death?  

(I remember the promise that you would be able to store all of your college work on one CD.  Clearly, that hasn't worked out, as our data needs have expanded to fit the available volume of storage.  Those shiny plastic discs, once thought to be indestructible, turned out to be even more ephemeral than good old paper.  Loss is inevitable.) 

In a related observation, I have seen the reluctance of elderly people to part with their stacks of mail, old newspaper clippings, bits of things that "might come in handy one day".  They seem to be saying, I cannot or will not die as long as I still have this pile of mail to go through… The stacks are some kind of assurance of their necessity and their presence.  As if people didn't die every day in the middle of doing the dishes, or folding the laundry.

A lifetime of American culture has been ingrained in me, and yet I do know, because of my channeling experiences, that there is so much to look forward to after our bodily life is over.  We do get to return to a state of absolutely unconditional acceptance and love.  It is almost impossible for people to imagine such a situation, invested as we are in our human form.  We have forgotten from whence we came, and to where we shall return.  It is not ashes to ashes, dust to dust -- but rather Spirit to Spirit and star to star.  We do not need to be afraid, and yet it is such a part of our culture..  Let us move from fear to love.   

Yes, we do miss our departed friends, family, pets -- but they are still always with us.  We just have to sit still, and listen.

Another way to remember
Dia de los Muertos group altar, 2012

Planetary love poem

all images and the poem belong to the writer/artist, Ellen M. Santistevan, 2013

On the bombing of the Boston Marathon, April 15, 2013

Maybe,  just maybe, we should now imagine ourselves at a wedding, birthday party, religious service, or community gathering in another country, one that is not at peace. We gather together, nonetheless, to celebrate, with our families and friends, things that are important to us... and then a bomb is dropped, or is stepped on, or is accidentally or purposefully detonated at our gathering. 

Is it from a foreign country that bombs gatherings with the purpose of killing alleged terrorists? Drone strikes kill 49 civilians for every 1 terrorist (http://www.policymic.com/articles/15340/drone-strikes-in-pakistan-have-killed-thousands-of-civilians). Is it a disgruntled member of our own country? Think of the Irish Republican Army bombing Belfast and London. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/294148/Irish-Republican-Army-IRA)  Is it just somebody with an axe to grind, or a cause to promote? Suicide bombings take place nearly every day, all over the world, creating massive carnage and demoralizing the public. (http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/explore?tag=suicide-bombing).

Maybe now is the time to imagine with empathy those civilians who are counted as merely "collateral damage" in someone else's war. They are not faceless foreigners. They are us. We are them.

What people do out of anger or fear is not isolated to just themselves anymore, if it ever was so limited. Everyone seems determined to cause as much damage as possible along the way. We must wage PEACE with as much determination and love as they are using fear and hate. 

We have to be the Gandhis, the MLKs, the Mother Teresas, the Rosa Parks, the Cesar Chavezes.... only by waging peace can we stop war.

Trajectories

How did I get here?

In the last week or two, I have gotten quite preoccupied with fully accepting and growing my spiritual and intuitive aspects.  Having grown up as more or less a complete skeptic, needing to touch and feel things in order to believe, I have been nevertheless propelled headlong into the plane of psychic phenomena.  It's not an easy transition.  Many mentors and teachers have shown up for me along the way, and most recently I have come to depend strongly on my community of (mostly) women intuitives.  People have come into my life, both in massage school and since I graduated, that have smoothed the way and helped to answer my floods of questions.  

Myra: the first person to tell me that I was an empath, and who began to train me to work with my natural abilities.

Judy and Gregory: who taught me craniosacral therapy and how to trust my hands as well as all of my senses

Valerie and Shelley:  whose reflective listening and uncanny ability to pick out the important threads from all my blathering help me to clarify what is really going on

Alia and Valentina: gifted psychics whose vision allowed me to accept the reality of accessing what is beyond the physical realm.  (as in Ghostbusters when Winston says, "This sh*t is REAL.")

Jennifer, Paul, Gurubhai, Mary Jo, and many others:  teachers, colleagues, and friends with whom I can speak openly about the strange things that happen, and of whom I can ask advice when I don't know how to proceed or what to do next.

But I have to go back to the beginning of my journey and most profoundly thank my advisor, colleague, and friend, Tami Vaughn-Morse.  Tami was my biggest gift in massage school, and certainly is one of the people that I count as the most influential in my entire life.  She was my advisor in school, who not only fully and unconditionally accepted me for who I was right away, but taught me, guided me, advised me, listened to me cry, shared my successes, and held the light for me to go into Polarity Therapy training.  

Tami is the example for me of how to "walk the walk" when it comes to quiet leadership, showing how to live without attachment to outcome and without expectations, but still to be able to be fully human.  She is patient, creative, an excellent teacher not only for school but also for how to live in the world.  Through her, I have met so many other deeply wonderful people that I am blessed to know.  If I had not met her, the trajectory of my life would have been very different.

So even though it's not any specially designated Day, like sibling day, mother's day, or teacher day -- today is the day that I say THANK YOU to Tami and to all of the people who form my healing community.  

(And one last special shout-out to my partner, David, whose affection and guidance in the world of painting has opened me up in the intuitive world too, and given me another community, of artists.  More about that in the next post.)

More on painting

"We are trained as children to say only the things that will be understood. The vast forests and storms within us we are taught not to try to communicate because they are too vast. Yet they are still there. We are still filled with vast oceans of consciousness. We are trained to constantly replace, interpret, symbolize, instead of paying attention to the actual moment-by-moment flood of consciousness, in which is contained the entire history of our race, the cosmos, our species identity, our birth, everything we know. Instead of attuning ourselves to this we are more or less trained to do the exact opposite: to shut out or short-circuit or symbolize all that vast phenomena into really limited and imprecise verbal formulations, and whatever cannot be so symbolized and short-coded, abbreviated, all the rest stands outside of consciousness."   --Carey Tennis

The above quote is something that seems to be a newly recognized principle in my daily life.  Always I have been wordy, reductive, and given to long-winded explanations of myself and the world around me.  Eighteen years of painting retablos did not expand my mind as much as two years of learning to draw and paint with my teacher and partner.

The art form of the retablo, much like most religious art, is meant to comfort and reassure, not to challenge or question.  Historically, some of it was meant to inspire us to greater things, but an awful lot is also meant to show the viewer just how wealthy and pious the patrons of the artist were, as their portraits are included in the scenery.  New Mexican retablo art was at its heart a catechitical tool for the illiterate.  Illustrations of the saints that both demonstrate and are recognizable by their iconography tell a story of sainthood and are reminders for us of certain virtues.  For myself, that type of painting became a daily tool for maintaining my state of recovery from depression.

Ecce homo, 2013
 Ellen Santistevan

I have felt for the majority of my life unable to explain myself sufficiently with words, often feeling that the words that were needed did not exist, or I did not have the facility needed to use them properly.  I have had a hard time making myself understood, and perhaps I recognize now that it is the general failing of humanity and language that we cannot truly communicate with words alone.  Certain things, yes:  directions, instructions, descriptive passages -- but words fail me completely when it comes to essence.  

On my website, the first thing on the first page says:  "Words cannot describe everything.  The heart's message cannot be delivered in words.  If one receives words literally, he will be lost.  If he tries to explain with words, he will not attain enlightenment in this life."  (Zen Master Mumon)  The next thing:  "Massage is a language without words."  I see the development of my bodywork practice and my painting as coming from the same source, and they have the same direction, that is, communication, listening.   What happens to me as I paint or draw is that the lines call to me to be created, rather than being planned from the beginning.   I'm certain that more than half of what I do with the watercolors on paper qualifies as 'happy accident', which I then try to reproduce with varying degrees of success, until stumbling into the next nifty thing.  At this point, I feel that this more receptive approach, that is, allowing the materials to talk to me and letting myself just work with them, is where I like to be.  It seems to fit in well with my approach to bodywork, in which I listen to the person and their body, and allow that listening to guide the work.

I have historically had a terrible lack of confidence where it came to expressive art.  Illustration is easy -- one can easily say that looks realistic, or cute, or moody, or whatever -- as long as it is recognizable, that is "good".  But the act of making visible one's subconscious is incredibly risky, and the judgement of "good" and "bad" (because we do judge) becomes not only a judgement of technique but also of the artists themselves.  Recognizing the beauty in abstract or minimalist art becomes more a question of what we personally relate to and are attracted by rather than the accuracy of representation.  Therefore, it is actually much more of a conversation,  or perhaps a cruise through the cocktail bar to scope out potentially interesting partners, words becoming less necessary because we are reacting on an almost pheromonal level.  Instead of thinking, we respond.  

In making the paintings, instead of thinking, we act.  no words.

In this course of compiling a small notebook with my small paintings, approximately the first one-third to one-half of the pages are not organized by chronology, because I had just discovered that indeed, I was able to handle watercolors on paper for the first time in my life, and I was less concerned by time order than arrangement.  After the initial filling in of pages, the progress becomes more apparent, as then I tried different techniques or subjects, and played with them in different ways.  

Some are lovelier, 

some are stranger,

 but all are for me to remember some kind of process that I was going through at the time.  I want to recall the feeling of laying down the paint rather than attempting to describe it with language, because finally I have another vocabulary, this visual idiom.

Polar Opposites

I have often wondered why it is that otherwise strong, kind, generous, smart, wonderful women and men get sucked into relationships with abusive partners, or partners who are needy, narcissistic, arrogant, or mean.  Obviously, I am not the only person who wonders this, as there are a huge number of self-help books devoted to the topic.  But after a long conversation I had with one of my clients the other day, as well as my growing understanding of Polarity, I finally came to an "energetic" understanding of the mechanism, and what we can do to overcome the tragic mismatch. 

We often hear it said, and see it to be true, that opposites attract.  Think fair and dark; extrovert and introvert; tall and short; May-December; thin and not-thin; James Carville and Mary Matalin.  I believe that we seek to balance ourselves, or rather our perception of ourselves, by our choice of  friends and partners.  

Our energetic boundary is a semi-permeable membrane.  Some things go through easily in one direction, but not so easily in the other.  For people with a strong natural tendency to be care-givers, it is much easier to give care, affection, and love than it is to receive it.  In fact, they (we) are notoriously difficult to compliment (as most compliments are deflected) or to buy presents for (because we feel that we don't deserve them).  I do not know if this aspect of high care-giving potential arises from or gives rise to a low sense of self-esteem, but somehow they seem somehow intermeshed and probably self-reinforcing.  I call this type of person a strong emitter.  They may be highly empathic but not know it.  This is the person who always volunteers to take in strays of all sorts, donates a lot to charity, and will pitch in to help a neighbor, a friend, or a complete stranger.  They have a high vibrational level.

kirlian photography from inspiringhealth.net

Then there are other people who give out very little of themselves, but are always ready to receive.  They are like a vaccuum for money, resources, gifts, time, feelings, energy, and even office supplies.  No matter what or how much you give, it is never quite enough.  They are always wanting more.  These are the people that appear to be doing little but can never spare the time to help you out.  They are the ones that make you tired to be around, even if you can't pinpoint the reason why.  Their lives would be perfect "if only…"

While some people call them "energetic vampires", I prefer to think of them as a black hole.  The 'vampires' take an active role in their predation of your time and energy, but the black-hole people seem to be unaware of this effect they have.  They just know that they are not happy within themselves and must fill their needs externally.  Their vibrational level is much lower than the emitter.

So what happens when the strong emitter meets the black hole?  At first it feels like each has met a soul mate.  They seem to fill each others' needs so perfectly.  THEY ARE POLAR OPPOSITES.  This chemistry of attraction can last for years, but inevitably, the emitter gets completely drained or burned out, while the black hole is still unsatisfied.  Much like stars, they will orbit around each other in a death spiral until one or the other figures it out (or dies).   The relationship is not always a romantic one either :  friends and office-mates frequently play out the dynamic.

This phenomenon goes by many names in our pop-psychology culture:  addict/enabler;  dependent/co-dependent; abuser/victim.  And the truth is that the behavior can be so subtle that neither person recognizes it for what it is, but as the years go on, it becomes not only entrenched but more extreme.  The power dynamic becomes terribly unequal.  Ultimately the relationship will end, either due to a drifting apart or an active break by one of the parties.  Sometimes the end will come violently, as the abuser/black-hole acts out his or her frustration and dissatisfaction with fists or weapons. I think more often it comes in the form of verbal abuse, which is more insidious, much less obvious to an outsider, and psychologically every bit as damaging to the victim.

The thing is, it can be truly difficult to recognize the black holes for who they are.  They can be very charming, flattering, and seductive, especially to a person who has a poor self-image and diffuse boundaries.  The idea of helping a fellow human can also be a powerful seducer for the emitting person.

The trouble is that we are stuck until we WAKE UP and become aware of our own energies as well as those of other people.  THE ONLY WAY TO BREAK THE PATTERN IS TO BECOME AWARE.  Our true love comes both from within, and from the Universe.  And if we are fortunate, we might find a partner that is on our same wavelength, our same vibrational level.  And then we don't just double our powers: our powers and energies grow exponentially.  Then our lesson becomes not how to give, but how to receive, how to accept, how to allow -- and thus be in service to Spirit as our energetic flow increases ever more.

To my daughter and son in law, on their wedding day

Some advice from someone who has been there and back, and has the battle scars to prove it.

Every person has their own story, how they view and judge themselves, and that can change from day to day, sometimes even minute to minute.  We  build up stories too, about our friends, our parents, children, and partners -- and the longer we know someone, the more entrenched that story can become, until all we know is that story of how we imagine the other person to be, and we lose sight of who the real person is.  

So pay attention, I tell you.  

Drop the pretense of familiarity, and see who your partner is in every single moment.    

Give each other room to grow, to evolve, to fail, to get up again, and to be human.  

Give yourself permission to change your own story.

Resist the rush to judgement and blame when you are angry or disappointed, and instead look within to tease out and understand your own feelings.   Be brutally honest with yourself, and be compassionate with this person who shares your life.

Be present with yourself, and with your lover.  

Understand that no one person can be everything to another, that you both need friends and activities of your own to enrich yourselves.  When you have that, then you can bring that richness home and share your own delight with your mate.  And your mate can be happy for you, and with you, and be proud of your accomplishments.

Learn new things.  They keep you interesting.  

Talk to each other-- not just about the bills, and who turned the toilet paper the wrong damned way, but about music and art and literature, what to plant in the garden this year, and did you see that the hyacinth shoots are coming up already?  And talk about the deep things.  Be open and vulnerable with each other.  You can choose to avoid intimacy, and you will live … ok.  But you can also choose the deeper path, and go through those times when you think your heart will just break, and learn that you are stronger than you ever thought, and learn also that the world does not actually explode even if you have to say something very difficult.   It is risky, yes, but worth it.

Be a safe refuge for each other.  Remember why you have chosen, today, to walk together.  Lighten each other's load, pull on the same yoke in the same direction, enjoy the ride, laugh a lot.   And most importantly, be kind to each other.  Act from a place of love and not from fear.  Fear leads to jealousy, possessiveness, and a constricted world that gets ever smaller.  Love is expansion, and growth, and tolerance, and encouragement.  

Be love.

February 18, 2013

Happy Valentine's Day to YOURSELF

This year, on the 13th of February, my partner and I went down to Truth or Consequences, NM, for a soak in a marvelous hot spring "wet room".  There is something profoundly regenerative in the mineral waters, as well as the reassuringly grounding stone and wood of the room itself.

the Blackstone wet room

It got me thinking about self care.  

In my practice as a therapist, one of the characteristics in how I approach my clients is that I allow myself to be energetically open to them (while still protecting myself), so that everything that I am, all my life experiences, are available to them to relate to me as a human being.  In this way, we can find points of commonality that allow us to work well together.  It is a process of communication, trust, and vulnerability.  After all, a client who places her or himself on my table is vulnerable and must trust me as well.  My open heart is my channel for helping that person do their own work.

But sometimes, life deals you hard blows.  One of the most difficult things for me in the last year was letting my youngest daughter go off to California for college.  (My older two daughters are nearby, and it didn't hurt so much as they grew up and left.)  It is truly for me a heart-breaking experience that I still have a hard time talking about without tearing up.  Also in the last year, my best friend's husband died, and she became suicidal with grief.  In her struggles, I could only stand by and offer support.  I cannot solve her sadness, nor would I want to interrupt her grieving process, but again, it has been a profoundly hard thing to do to just hold space for her and not step in.

In order to cope with daily life, as we all must, I found myself hardening up.  I closed off my own grief and found myself once again with the same kind of pain that I had near the end of my marriage.  I suffered painful somatic torments in my own body because I felt that I could not allow myself to express my sorrows openly.    Another practitioner told me my body felt as if someone had poured concrete down my spine. I did not want to feel the pain, so I just stopped myself from feeling all together.   And the key thing is that I actually knew it.  I felt it.  I was aware of it, and yet I still did nothing to fully take care of myself.

In the waters yesterday, I felt that I needed to meditate on this problem.  As I floated and sank with the rhythm of my breath, I thought about allowing myself to be supported and nurtured.  Instinctively, my partner came over to me and held my feet in his hands, and gently massaged them, taking his time over each part, working up into my legs.  It was an unsolicited act of kindness and love.   I felt the urge to cry, and finally was able to permit some of the pent up tears to flow out.  I allowed myself to trust this man deeply, in a way that I had not done so before (because there had been little enough trust in any of my previous romantic relationships).  In accepting this unconditional care from him, I also enabled a deepening in the relationship.  I allowed myself to be open and vulnerable again.  I gave myself permission to trust, to feel hurt, to feel love…. just to feel.  I trust that the Universe will take care of me, and know that it is alright to feel all these human emotions.  It is a part of being a human being, fully alive and in this body.

So my Valentine's message to you, my readers, is to love yourself.  Allow someone else to love you too, even though it may be very difficult to permit yourself that vulnerability and openness.  Trust that there are people who can love without expectation, who can love unconditionally, who will support and nurture you, who can act with compassion.  Be compassionate and gentle with yourself.  Life is full of rocks and thorns and hard uncomfortable things in our paths -- we owe it to ourselves to treat ourselves and others with kindness and love.