These massive Bur Oaks were speaking to me, in fact, weeping, their pain searing my heart, jerking me from my own misery. 

Eight of these giants formed two parallel lines along a hidden area of a hundred year old cemetery, of which the city had now grown around.  Their bark was thick, maybe 8 or 10 inches, their limbs were the size of tree trunks, turning and twisting in various directions as only Bur Oak limbs can.  These giants didn’t quite reach to the heavens, but their energy did.  And forest fairies danced among their boughs.  To me, they were god in form, receptors bringing other worldly information to earth. 

These godly sentinels calmed and comforted me, lifted my pain, soothed my tears when life “out there” was too much.  They understood me.  I drew strength from them, having sought shelter in their embrace for a decade or more. 

Now, these gentle giants were clearly speaking of their demise, “telling” me that their time was limited—an oak alarm!  Feeling the pain of these giants was as if I were one of them, or one with them; their pain and mine were so intertwined. My rational mind stepped in: a cemetery is a safe place, sacred, untouchable?  But already I had observed a bulldozed older section, partially-exposed coffins and headstones tilted to and fro. 

The Burs continued to infuse me with more alarming information.  Time and space disappeared.  Although rattled, my wondering jumped alive the minute I was grounded back in the physical.  As I reluctantly departed, questions exploded:  Is this real?  Am I crazy?  Do trees really talk?  My God, how could I ever speak of this experience?  All I knew, as I dragged myself home, was that my heart hurt. My childhood fantasy was to live in the treetops, as high as possible.  I had always measured the quality of life by the number of trees present.  I just couldn’t imagine life without “my” oaks. 

Shortly, I left the country to work overseas for two years.  During this time, a brief stateside trip provided the means to visit The Smithsonian.  My soul/sole interest had been a display on old growth forests.  Within minutes of arriving, my attention was drawn to a video on the subject.  A camera was panning over miles and miles of ancient forests.  I watched with intrigue, while well aware that excessive logging was reducing old growth forests at an unsustainable rate. 

While I watched and wondered, suddenly, like a hologram, I was witnessing a different image overlaying the video, one of all the old growth forests being destroyed, all trees on the planet toppled and tossed and heaved in one fell swoop. I turned and stumbled down the stairs to the entrance and into the sunshine.  Another undeniable oak alarm!  

My two years overseas, where I had come to cherish the tropical trees as much as my oaks, came to an end.  I returned briefly to the city, my first stop being the cemetery.  Following a familiar trail through an obscure area of the forest preserve, and ducking under a rusty old fence, hesitantly I looked up to connect to my trees.  I so wanted to believe they and all the elementals they supported would be there to greet me.  Concrete-cold condominiums stood in their place, reaching to the sky, but not in any way to heaven.  Like ghosts, the spirit of my beloved oaks lingered.  Small comfort!  But there was no room for disbelief.  They had told me.  While I understood their energy was implanted in my heart, still I wept.
  

Almost immediately, life took me to Alaska.  That’s when my Nostradamus visions first came forth. I’d be awakened in the middle of the night, by a now familiar force.  Night after night I was shown “videos” of the future. They came fiery harsh: black, red and strange gold colors, horrific sounds, and feelings of unimaginable changes on earth—terrifying changes.  An all-encompassing oak alarm!  One night, I beseeched, “Why am I being shown the future?”  I was informed, “So you will be prepared when the time comes.” 

Last week I went to my preferred retreat, a petite lake high in the mountains far from the madding crowd.  The lake houses an otter family, and giant spruce and pine define the perimeter.  Intuition revealed even as I parked my vehicle that things had changed since my last visit in the late fall.  Immediately upon the path, I noticed that a tree here was stressed, one over there dead.  The more I climbed the steep hill, the more I saw that the majority of trees were in various states of dying.  And where I should have been viewing a green carpet across the mountain slopes, I saw shades of brown and gray.  Once at the lake, I noticed many of the giant of giants were now dead, others close behind.   My thoughts were drawn to my Bur Oaks and my Nostradamus visions.  I had no reaction.  I had been trained well—trained to expect change, yet have no reaction. 

Then too I keep an eye on the pines around my area. Last year there were only a few browning spirits dotting the landscape.  This year one tree after another dead!  Junipers and a few firs remain.  Everywhere these great energy receptors, these great bringers of divine energy, are disappearing—indicators of the great changes upon us.  Oak alarms are sounding across the planet.
 

Now, all the trees in the world, every minute, night and day, are tuning me into this Gulf “accident’.  This Gulf phenomenon is wreaking havoc like nothing we’ve ever seen.  No one will be left unaffected. This is a global matter.  This is such a monumental oak alarm.  A wake-up call of all wake-up calls.  What do we do?  What can we do?
 

I don’t judge.  I don’t condemn.  I don’t react. I watch and listen and wonder.  Fear is not the way.  Understanding is.  I look to the sky for understanding.  Oak Alarm!!!  Time to wake up!  But we must ask, “What is this really about?” and “What does it have to do with me?”   Like giant oaks, it’s time for all of us to tune into the heavens and hold that space of consciousness here on earth.

Losing our connection to nature has left humanity to lose sight of its core self.  We come back home to nature, we come back home to self.  Like the trees, the time is now for us all to tune into the heavens.

I watch world events as they unfold while staying tuned to a greater understanding, focusing on what humanity has to learn from all this…knowing that we all have agreed to be here at this time.   Whatever it takes to bring us home, is whatever it takes.  Without question, the winds of change are upon us.  THE TIME IS NOW!

One day, fighting mad, I vowed (or more accurately I initiated the awakening of a deep inner vow) to discover who I am and why I am here.   That was in my middle thirties.  Even as a child, I had studied others, and questioned them - thinking that if I could understand at least my mother, father, brothers, cousins— I could figure out who I am and why I am here.   Three decades of effort had led to nowhere other than disillusionment.  I couldn’t find myself in my life as I knew it.  Through my vow a quest had been born: to understand who I am and why I am here.  The deeper urge was to live my life as a gift.   

But where to start?  First, I said goodbye to my therapist.  In my deepest knowing I had been as valuable—maybe more— to him as he had been to me.  His final words were, “You know you are embarking on a lonely path?”  I had responded that it would be no lonelier than my life to date.   Then I walked out the door, shaken to the core.

My first desperate impulse was to obtain the latest self-help books or take some spiritual classes.  Slowly, it began to sink in: what I needed would be provided—I didn’t get to call the shots. 

I knew for certain I was on “the path”, when suddenly there was nothing predictable about me.  I scared people—more than ever.  I scared myself even more.   I thought I was going here and ended up somewhere else.  People came into my life and just as fast they were gone.  That wee voice inside of me that I had attempted to squelch for so long could no longer be controlled.  And I didn’t want to control it.  This was crazy scary, a form of spiritual madness.   I was on the freedom path.  

One evening, called with great haste to my sylvan sanctuary, a message, straight and direct, jammed my energy field with a force never felt to date.  “That now-familiar God voice declared with iron severity:  “You are not free until everyone is free!”    

The message carried me far and away to a place of true law.  That I could not be free until every last being understands who they are and why they are here transcended linear thought.  Yet, the truth was alive within me.  I could feel it. No one is free until all are living their lives as a gift.  EVERYONE!! Humbled to the core, I continued on.

 Years passed, my search was my life.  Along the way I watched my personal self die—one by one, ideas, desires, wants, needs, all illusions had to be surrendered…or else ripped from me.   My personal death was a small price to pay for this journey of greater understanding.

One day a woman proclaimed that she had read a quote by an Aboriginal woman on her girlfriend’s bathroom wall and she thought I would like it.  It went, “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time.  But if you have come because you know your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”   Another road sign: we are all in this together!  

Thousands of miles turned into tens of thousands.  I struggled with the engrained compulsion to pick up others along the way, talk them into joining me, carry them if necessary.  That drive, which was in my DNA, came from many past lives where I had had responsibility for the well-being of the collective.  Now was different.  I had to stay on “the path” all by myself even while I understood that I would not be free until everyone was free.  It seemed heartless and self-centered, but it wasn’t.  I was leaving the masses, climbing Mt Clear Vision, leaving earth, traveling way out there where a greater “I” was waiting for me, as well as information that could never be found in textbooks.   I was traveling home.  Leaving the human world while still embodied proved to be an excruciatingly lonely situation…for the ego.

One day, shortly after my mother passed on, she came flying in panicked, clamoring to explain that I had to help her.  She understood that she had wasted her life and was presently stuck in what she called the collective disconnection.   She showed me all the others there with her—the grand scope of the collective disconnection.  She beseeched, “you have to help get me out!                You have to help all of us get out of here!”  She proclaimed that I had the power to help her and all the others—and that I had agreed to do so.  

It became ever clearer, that as I pulled myself out of my own disconnection, the more I was creating space for my mother as well as others to follow.  The more who free themselves from the collective disconnection—as my mother had labeled it—and move into the greater connection the stronger the greater connection becomes and by contrast the weaker the collective disconnection becomes.  Step by step, as each of us embraces “the path” to knowing ourselves and why we are here, we become a gift to each other.

Today, as I watch this earth world being turned around and around, and inside out—fighting here, fighting there, fighting for this or that, fighting for freedom, it is clear that this false sense of freedom is crumbling.  It’s not about saving our things, or saving our lives, or having life on our terms.  This is about moving from our old way of being to a god self waiting for us.   As we each step onto “the path” leading to true freedom—living who we are and why we are here— that vibration pulses ever more strongly within each of us.  

It is time to open to the awareness of what lies beyond the human realm.  It is time to walk through the veil that separates us from the truth of who we are.  Make the commitment.  Take a first step.  Embrace your fears.  Unearth your pain.  Face your shame, regrets, sadness.  Heal old wounds.  Be brutally honest with yourself.  Let your heart speak.   The path to freedom has its perils.  Staying put is deadly.

Know there are many ahead and behind and beside you on the journey.   Those ahead of you are reaching out to you.  Those behind you need you to reach out to them.   And too the support of the unseen ones awaits us, but “they” are held immobilized until we take our first step.  That first step is the invitation.

As we each embrace the knowing of who we are and why we are here, we become part of a force that magnetizes us.  We are all in this together.  Coming together in the realm of greater awareness, the world of “we,” means we are all free.  This is the new paradigm.  The time is NOW!

Last night the winds of change blew with great spirit.  Rain hit the windows sideways.  The new metal roof was put to the test.  This morning everything was left slippery, the tail end of this spirit wind still visible.  I stepped gingerly down the steps, scraped the ice from my windshield, and headed out the drive. 

Despite being ill, I understood the night before that I would be heading for unexplored territory—a lake higher in the mountains, one that had been waiting for me.  I also knew that no one else would be there.   From a distance, it looked more like a pond, planted in the middle of a rolling plain, no trees, but sagebrush bumping into each other.  I imagined how hot it would be there in the summer.

As I neared, I saw an amazingly large flock of small birds, almost like a swarm, a cloud moving fast to and fro.  Suddenly I was in the middle of this avian dance.  Swallows!  Hundreds of them!   I watched, transfixed.  They gave me no mind.  

Swallows catch insects in flight, often seen swooping over bodies of water for a tasty morsel.   With the wind charging across the open plain the way it was, there was little chance of an aerial meal. 

 Two and two were beginning to make four as I was drawn into this phenomenon.  Swallows are not adapted to ground feeding like robins and sparrows.  But they were landing, or maybe dropping down from a place inches above the ground, with an odd gyration of their wings.   They seemed to be landing for a split second, just long enough to pick insects from the ground, using their wings in place of feet, a strange graceful twisted flap moving them a slight inch forward—wing walking!   Just as fast, one more charged flap and they were once again in the air.  One end of a wave going down, a rush of wing movement  across the ground, and the other end rising up—hundreds of wings but seemingly one mind, one flowing movement.  For the longest time, I studied this low-flying mass of swirling, dipping swallows moving in front, behind and around me, grateful that these aerial creatures were undisturbed by my presence. 

Of course there was a message waiting for me—yet another winds-of-change message.  These swallows were undaunted by these unrelenting winds.  They weren’t confused.  They didn’t fall apart because their circumstances suddenly changed.  They didn’t miss a beat…or a wing flap.  They went with the flow, and with such grace. Life changed.  They found a new approach, a different “feeding ground.”  

Can we be like the swallows?  Not confused, lost, or blown to pieces by the winds of the moment?  Can we be one with the change, using it to our advantage?   Using change to carry us forth rather than pummel us to the ground?The winds of change are strengthening.  The signs are everywhere.  It’s important to pull ourselves from our reverie-now.  It’s even more important to begin to prepare. 

How does one prepare?  Philosophies are many:  physical preparation, mental, emotional, energetic.

As the wind continues to roughen the surface of this small lake, oddly, I am suddenly seeing myself get on an airplane.  There before me is a flight attendant going through the emergency procedure talk.   Have you ever noticed how few passengers listen? 

Whenever I fly I always make a point of listening.  I take notice of where I am sitting, where the emergency exits are.  I get my bearings.  It’s a matter of being responsible.  Not only may I have to get myself to safety, I may have to help others.  Putting my own oxygen mask on first has always been the stand-out message—a metaphor.  Without preparing myself I jeopardize my own safety and that of others.  It’s prudent to be self-reliant, think on one’s feet, keep eyes wide open, and like a good hiker, always be tuned into changes up, down and all around.   I say with all seriousness: the only way to help others is to prepare yourself. 

A spiritually practical means of preparation is to address our fears, phobias, and insecurities.  The less fear the more our hearts can lead the way.  Hearts have the capacity to find and live ways that fear won‘t allow.  Hearts embrace adaptability, fear can’t. Let our heart guide our actions.

Be like the swallows.  Flock together, join hands and hearts, become one—a “we” instead of a “me”.   Together, the winds of change can bring the best out of us or to us.  In the correct wing position we can use the winds of change to propel us into a whole new paradigm, one that’s born of cooperation …and harmony …and peace.  May we all learn to wing walk.  The time is now!

Salita’s mother believed she was a failure because she had not provided the means for Salita and her siblings to attend college.  For years, Salita has talked about going back to school in order to make something of herself—to be a somebody.  In our present conversation, she realized that she is not just enslaved by her mother’s beliefs, but trapped by her own beliefs about herself which she brought with her into this embodiment—programs running right on the DNA hard drive...I’m a nobody.  A nothing.

In conversation with Salita, I informed her that I had just had a discussion with a man who had a doctorate and a ministerial degree, not to mention a truckload of holistic healing certificates and credentials.  Although a doctor, this man had little confidence and suffered from the same insecurity and anxiety as Salita.   He recently came to realize that he had to take his truckload of “credentials” to the dump.  He had to empty his mind.  If he was ever going to awaken to his true self and live the purpose that was dogging him ever more intensely, he had to de-dogmatize himself. 

Long silence!  Salita’s belief was that the only way to "becoming" was to get those credentials.  The doctor’s only way to "becoming" was to get rid of those credentials.  

Observing Salita’s inner struggle, I reflected back to her information she had just divulged.   Salita works as a translator in a school setting and also privately.  In particular, she has one teenage student, newly arrived in the US who speaks no English.  Salita, more than a translator, is the young girl’s inspiration, a living example of adaptation and success.   Salita has been a support system for the student that she herself never had twenty odd years earlier when she first came to the US as a teenager speaking no English.

I further reflected back to Salita another situation she had divulged.  She had been translating for a psychologist.   In a recent appointment, she found herself including her own “twist” to the therapist’s words, words coming directly from her heart and far beyond any means to halt.  At the same time, Salita had been praying the therapist would not notice her breach of protocol.  When all was said and done, the client walked out of the office her sense of depression greatly relieved for the first time in a year and the therapist feeling quite accomplished. 

I pressed Salita with questions.  The doctor had the degree, but who had the “medicine”?   Would the client have walked away feeling so heartened if you had withheld your heart medicine?  Could you have been so “in tune” if you were systematically educated as was the therapist?  The truth bumped against Salita’s I’m-a-nobody programming.

We all have to let go of something or another—actually everything—to be the light that we are.   For Salita, it wasn’t about being nothing and becoming something or somebody.  She had to give up her belief that she was limited in any way.  She had to own the truth about herself.

As difficult as it has been for Salita to hear, for many years I have called her “Estrella Guia” ( Guide Star) for her light is so bright it humbles me to be in her presence.   People are naturally attracted to her, despite her belief that she is nobody—despite her effort to hide that light. 

 At the end of her exploration, as is usual, I had Salita take a deep breath and lift herself into outer space, outer awareness.  This far away from her linear mind it was impossible for her to deny her own value, her own gifts to the world—the intensity of her own brightness.  She saw that she was whole and being a somebody (or a nobody) was not real.

We all have what we need right now to bring our gifts to the world.  It takes a shift in awareness, however, to own this understanding.  The personal (ego) self does not and will not abide by greater understanding, greater guidance.  This is why it is essential that we acquire and maintain an elevated awareness, a vibration that the ego is powerless to undermine.   The truth about ourselves is not visible to the human eye.  As Salita witnessed from elevated awareness we already have what we need to be who we are…we just have to have the courage to live it.  

This brings me back to the Haitians.  (I wrote about them in my last blog.)  My connection to them grows ever stronger.  Their collective voice is quite a force.  The Haitians know slavery.  They have lived slavery for generations—in fact, many of them over and over as they continually reincarnate into the same unresolved issues, as is Salita’s situation.   They ask that we free ourselves from slavery, the self-imposed kind.  It’s not about becoming a “somebody”.  It’s about true recognition of who we are. 

The Haitian voice informs me that freeing ourselves from slavery is an individual matter, something that we each must do within ourselves…just as Salita is freeing herself from her limiting beliefs— by becoming Estrella Guia.    Change our thought, set ourselves free.   It’s time we all live our freedom song. 

A tipping point is nigh.  The mountain beckons.  I don my boots, head straight for the wilderness, my dog quick to join me.  I know this is about Haiti.  Yes, Haiti.  Since the initial tremor, I have been “there” more than here.  The connection strengthen day by day and creates sleepless nights.   

 As I traverse the familiar deer trail, my body reads particularly high on the Richter scale.   Every cell is charged with a higher frequency.  Brought on the wind moving across the glistening, snow-covered mountainside, the collective voice of the Haitians permeates my awareness.   Many, many voices!  I listen so very carefully.  I listen with my heart, with my spirit ears.  I am one with them.  “Tick! Tick! Tick!”  One second in the lives of the Haitians goes by...another second and then another—time stands still.

I’m pulled into depths of the lives of the Haitians.  Tick!  Tick!  Tick!  Tick!  I see bodies slow down, vital functions seizing up.   Tick!  Tick!  With every tick I am brought closer to them, drawn into them, into their feelings and thoughts and hearts.   Moving from this side of the veil to the other and back again, simultaneously, touching spirits—god matter to god matter.  Words repeat in my head, softly, gently, “It’s okay.  It’s just okay.  You are okay.  And you are okay.  Quiet yourselves.  Listen.   You who are about to go through the veil stay calm.   You are okay.  You are not separate from anyone.  You are not separated.  Separation is not real."

“Many of you have gone through the veil, and are on the ‘other side’ now.  With the monumental changes that have occurred, confusion permeates your situation.   It takes time to adjust to such monumental changes—individually and collectively.  Whether you remain embodied or have left embodiment, these are confusing times.  For those of you who left embodiment prior to the body succumbing to death, confusion is intensified.  Clinging to the body, life, families—all that’s familiar—is painful.   I recognize your pain.

 “Let me hold you in my heart.  Let me hold you in your hearts.  Open your hearts to see that you are okay.   Look within the heart of your own awareness to see the truth—the big picture. Know that you now have greater awareness as you complete this passage through the veil—as these circumstances bring you home.  Know that you are whole.  Be in peace.   

“Know that in your “death” you are playing a role to humanity.   Your life—your death—will not be wasted.  It has become a gift.  Be in peace.  Be in gratitude now.   I come to the other side to be with you who have left embodiment.   I ask you to calm yourself so that you may help return to calm those who are still embodied.    Let them know that you are fine.  They can hear you if you embrace calmness.   I know you can hear them.   Comfort them with your calm.   Let them know they are okay.  Help them see beyond death even though death is upon their bodies.   Be at peace.   Be at peace.

 “Your being at peace supports all of us who remain here in the physical dimension.  Your suffering has already opened our hearts.  You will not be forgotten.    Be at peace for we need your continued support.   Although the form is not clear, more earthquakes are at hand—further turmoil and chaos.   All of you who are leaving embodiment at this time know within your hearts that you are doing so for a reason…for a greater reason.  We ask that you hold a space for us—a space of peace and calm.

Right now I see a Bald Eagle soaring through the heart of the Haitian voices.  Soaring against the mountains before me— such great majesty.  The eagle is soaring directly over my head now.   Powerfully god-like…reaching for the heavens.  “Thank you Bald Eagle.  Thank you for confirming my communion with fellow spirits – our dear Haitian Kin.  Thank you for being a messenger of God.  Thank you for guiding us.  Thank you.   Thank you Haitians.”

I now move with the wind, following the eagle up the side of the mountain listening for further message from this winged god spirit who knows no veil. 

One final thought as the Bald Eagle merges with the heavens, “Haitians!  I’m with you.  I cross over.   I meet with you.  I sit with you.  I hold a place of peace with you.  We’re so all in this together.   Now we must work from a collective mind.  We must dissolve the veil—the illusion of separation—whether or not we remain embodied.   

“Prayer has its place.  Understanding leaves us as one.  It’s time to live as a collective heart.”

Kin, Ia

I conversed with Sophia today.  With a simple query, she broke down in tears.  Collecting herself a few minutes later, she sobbed, “These tears are burning my face.  They really burn!”  I suggested she examine the past life memory behind her tears.  She was being burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft—or more precisely stated, for dispensing herbal remedies.

Coming out of the pain of the memory, Sophia suddenly changed direction, and related her experience from the week before.  After having told a friend of her latest trials and tribulations, the friend asked Sophia if there was an entity living in her body.  In other words, was she possessed?  Sophia had long felt her home was haunted, and that someone (a ghost) had not wanted her husband and her to move in.  She believed it was a prior owner, an old woman, and added that the granddaughter of that woman lived next door. 

The conversation next moved to the friend's concern that Sophia might be possessed by this old woman. Consequently, her friend offered Sophia a healing session.  During the course of the session, they made contact with the old woman.  The friend urged the old woman to leave Sophia’s body and go into the light. But after the session neither Sophia nor her friend were sure if the “entity” had departed. 

The way Sophia’s friend addressed the situation was standard within the confines of the new age movement.  Entities in a host body are generally summoned and then sent on their way “into the light”, disappearing from sight, and supposedly all participants benefit—much less confrontational than the conventional exorcism.

When I asked Sophia to ask herself if the old woman was gone, she responded, “I don’t think so.”  And when I asked her to ask herself if the woman wanted to converse with her, Sophia replied, “I think so.”   As Sophia moved-- without instruction or fear--into her own greater awareness, the space necessary for Sophia and her “possessor” to communicate was reached in a brief moment.

Prior to moving into expanded awareness, Sophia had quietly stated that she had asked her husband the name of the old woman the day before, but he didn’t know.  She also related that the old woman seemed to hang around their bedroom, and that over time Sophia had grown so accustomed to her presence that she gave her no thought.

Knowing that there was a certain deep connection waiting to occur, I suggested that Sophia ask the old woman her name. “Dorothy”, she responded confidently.

Next, Sophia took a moment to try on the thought that perhaps Dorothy wasn’t possessing her, but rather she was attempting to make herself known. It fit.

Sophia also answered her own question of whether Dorothy had actually been possessing her or just so close that it felt as if she were.  “Dorothy was very close,” she declared.

After a stretch of silence that allowed Sophia to shift further into greater awareness, I brought to her attention the fact that Dorothy desired to talk to her.

After still another stretch of silence, Sophia reported “I was asking her how she was doing.  She was telling me something about her granddaughter, like she wants me to tell her granddaughter that she loves her.  I'm asking her how I do that?” 

Having been challenged with panic attacks and a general fear of conversing with most everyone, Sophia belabored Dorothy’s request.  To speak in this manner to the granddaughter terrified Sophia, even though she had lately been facing her fears head-on. Sophia had declared earlier in our conversation that there were things she had to begin doing to create a brand new world for herself—it was a do or die. Dorothy’s request was a perfect set-up. Sophia recognized that Dorothy was asking her to be the vehicle—the bridge between worlds—to make contact with her granddaughter.  To be the cell phone tower.

When asked to step back in time and see where she and Dorothy had known each other before, Sophia immediately responded, “I see her talking to me.  She was one of my guides...and she still is.  I see her as an old lady who opens her house to anyone who needs shelter, and she bakes lots of cookies. She always had cookies for people.  She took me into her house, and other children, and was like a grandmother to all of us who were left behind by our families.  We were like foster children.  And I see now that I’ve known for some time that she’s been wanting to connect with me, but I’ve been too afraid.”

Even more quiet, Sophia announced, “Because of all the stories I believed about ghosts and stuff like that.  This is like a new world.  Of seeing more than just the physical".

I tested her, “This is your world, Sophia.  Isn't it?” 

“Ya, that's one of the reasons why I...like I don't know how to live out there yet”.  Sophia began to cry as she moved further out in the space where only oneness exists.  Her voice came with soft intensity, “And it's so painful, nothing in my present world works anymore...nothing makes sense.  Nothing!  In this other world out there, nothing is a big deal.  Nothing!  It’s just all so easy out here.”

 “So, there is this other world calling to you?” I nudged.  "But thoughts of going to this more reliable world bring up memories of being viewed as crazy...of being burned as a witch. Now, you have to travel through (dissolve) your hellish past to get to your world, to get back home again? There is a necessity showing up to go home, isn’t there?”

I queried Sophia where Dorothy fit into her witch-burning memory.  Sophia articulated with grave appreciation, “Dorothy was waiting for me on the other side.  She supported me as I left embodiment.  Dorothy was and is still a guide.  Dorothy is supporting my transition this time also, only this time, I’m making the transition without exiting my body.”

Sophia’s final words were, “This is really, really intense!!  And it feels crazy at the same time, because I don't know how I'm going to do this, Ia.  How it's going to happen?  How am I going to live in that world and still be in this one?”

I reminded her that it was already happening. The fact that she could so readily converse with the unseen ones (ghosts), or with those on the other side, was singular proof that she was in the transition.  In the witch-burning memory, Sophia was burned for bringing information from the other side, from her far away world.  Now, she had to dissolve the memory of that burning to return to her own innate power.  I’d been telling Sophia for many years that she is the bridge—the bridge between worlds.  Now she could see that I wasn’t just meaning between the Hispanic community and the larger community.  It was about the earthly community and the Greater Community.  Sophia’s capacity to “listen” and translate was innate.  It was her gift to the world.  It must be shared…or else it is lost.  She is a natural-born translator.

It is not abnormal or paranormal to communicate with those who are dis-embodied.  Nor is it difficult.  It’s not a feat left to psychics. It’s not a “gift.”  In truth, we are all psychics.  Sophia, in the process of healing, was coming in contact with her greater self, and along with that, her “greater” capacity.

The veil between worlds is dissolving as more and more non-bodied beings are attempting to communicate with us here in the human realm.  In fact, there is a desperateness to communicate, a desperateness to support.  More and more are leaving embodiment at this time in history.  Take heart, many who are leaving now are doing so to live a greater purpose from the “other side”.

Like Sophia in the throes of an ego death, we have to die to our attachments, beliefs, and limitations to live a greater purpose, even as we remain embodied.

In review, the issue was not Dorothy possessing Sophia.  Rather it was a matter of how Sophia was possessed by her own misperceptions.  Ideas, dogma, beliefs, et cetera all work to keep us limited in understanding the "real world."  In getting in touch with her own inner knowing, Sophia freed herself to experience the world of "Greater Community."

Lindsey had worked for many years breaking free of limitations, bit by bit.  Only recently her life had been hit by an unexpected hurricane… blowing what was left of old emotions, and obsolete thoughts and beliefs in all directions.    She’d spent the previous few months sifting through the debris, salvaging what had value, discarding the rest.  From a greater perspective, however, her personal storm had blown her into a whole new realm of consciousness. 

 Now, the moment had dawned for Lindsey to see her “real self” manifested.  I prompted her to revisit a specific past life that she had unearthed the week before.   In that lifetime, she had died resistant to living her “real self,” angry with having to be embodied at all and feeling like a failure.   She knew her present situation was the chance to create a new story ending.  It was time to just get on with her purpose.  A deep inner drive to stand in her own power and bring the best of herself to the world was overriding her resistance.  “But what is my purpose?” she begged for the umpteenth time.

I questioned myself. What tool, what information could I bring forth to aid Lindsey in answering her own question?  She needed a story—a parable—to gain understanding.   Much to my surprise, a fictional piece for adolescents came to mind.  

A wealthy couple put their young son on a ship delivering him to relatives for holiday.  The ship sank on the way and only the boy and an elderly black man survived…being washed ashore on a small, uninhabited island.  Having lived a privileged life, the boy was helpless.   This was not the case for the elder.

It was an odd relationship, boy only willing to see his elder as a servant while the elder was only willing to help the boy become self-sufficient.   Stuck together in such a fashion, the two gradually began to form a deep bond.   Days drifted by.  Storms came and went.  The search for food was a constant exercise.

 One day, the elder began to read the sky— a formidable storm was approaching.  In fact, the perfect storm!  He gathered the boy and hastened to prepare.   Taking the final step, the old man secured the boy and then himself to the strongest palm. 

After the hurricane had passed, the boy rose from his crouched position on the leeward side of the tree.  This was not the case for the elder.   Grief-stricken, the boy gathered himself together and focused on getting down to practical matters.  The elder had taught him well.  Days later, a ship anchored off-shore.  The boy who had survived the shipwreck was not the boy returning home. 

Accustomed to my stories, Lindsey charged deep in pursuit of the message…the tool…the gift.  “Am I the boy changed forever?  Am I the elder, wise and caring?”  She queried…and sorted…and sifted—as usual. 

Finally, I said, “’Yes!’  You are the boy who is the better off for having been shipwrecked.  And, ’Yes!’ you are the wise, patient and loving elder.   But more exactly, you are the tree.”  Her long silence revealed that she was connecting  to the deep truth of my announcement.  She was, in fact, embodying the energy of the tree. 

 “Yes, you are the tree.”  I continued.  “In fact, you are a spirit tree.  The tree that holds strong through the storm of storms—through the perfect storm.  You’ve recently survived your own hurricane.  You have emerged stronger than you can yet imagine.   You understand hurricane force winds.  You understand the winds of change.  You’ve just lived your own.

Deeper silence followed.  When Lindsey finally spoke, it was from a place of crystal clarity, “A spirit tree has deep roots… very deep.  At the same time, it is supple and resilient.  It bends in the wind, but it does not break.  It reaches to the heavens, while anchored deeply in the earth mother.”   Her spirit tree self—her “real self”— was coming alive…bringing forth the truth of her purpose and her place in the world.   In the process, her long-held resistance to being embodied was dissolving.   And her spirit guides were jubilant.

I went on to articulate, “The world needs as many spirit trees as possible right now as these winds of change upon planet Earth pick up speed.  You were not destroyed by your own hurricane.  You are alive and well, stronger than ever.  You know how to stand strong.   People will need strong trees to secure themselves to now.  Without a plethora of spirit trees, many will perish in the coming storm.  You know you are designed to provide refuge for others in stormy times.  You know that your profound strength and intuitive powers are coming alive.  This is your time.”

Lindsey wept deeply, realizing that her “real self” was emerging.  She wept out of gratitude.  She wept in acknowledgment that she was once-and-for-all anchoring deeply into the center of her own purpose—like a spirit tree.   While she wept, the heavens opened and spirit trees everywhere embraced her stance among them.

What is my purpose?  Why am I here?  These questions are becoming more and more common.   Lindsey has been asking these two questions for many years.  At the same time, she’s been chipping away at the layers of illusion that encrust her real self—the “God Self”.   Our God Self steps forth as  ego dies.   (Our linear mind is not capable of grasping this.)   To understand God Self is to understand purpose for they are one and the same.  Ultimately, we are the purpose we are seeking.

The conversation was coming to an end.  As is customary, Jack asked me to give him homework.  (Jack claims that homework allows him to stay grounded and focused…gives him something to chew on.) Without hesitation, I stated, “Shed six tears before we talk again.”  He laughed out loud, one of his deep hearty gut laughs.  Then came silence…deep, intense silence.   “Six tears, that’s two a day until we talk again, he blurted.   Another long silence.   “Or, it’s none tomorrow, four the next day and two the following day.”  Long silence.   “Or, six on the last day.”

Jack was the product of a classic toxic family.  His father had been an alcoholic and a rager, humiliation being the primary weapon he had used against his oldest child, Jack.  To manage such a nightmarish childhood, Jack had disconnected from the pain of it all.  He had gone numb.  He could not feel.  As Jack came of age, he relied on sex, drugs and alcohol, and other addictive behavior, to keep his pain at bay—to remain numb.  But the pain, worming around for 50 odd years, had taken a serious toll, and now was hitting hard on his physical body. 

 He had been chipping away at his childhood issues for some time, examining a host of traumatic incidents.  He was realizing how these incidents, stacked together, left him a man of many conflicting personalities.  The most significant challenge was that he remained unable to explore his pain from his pain, but only from the safety of his intellect, coldly and mechanically, not deeply and effectively.   

Somewhere, somehow, Jack was dogmatically certain that he had a greater purpose to live.  He was beginning to realize that he had no chance of living that greater purpose unless he opened his heart.   With a closed heart, he knew he was doomed to live nothing more than what he had lived to date…chaos and self-sabotage.  It was becoming clear that the only way to opening his heart was to “un-numb” himself, travel through the pain of reconnecting to himself.  It was cry or die.

 As is always the case, our childhood circumstances are determined by what issues we bring into embodiment with us.  Jack’s heart had been shut down for uncountable life times, creating patterns of limitation embedded right in his DNA.   One significant pattern says,  ”enduring embodiment is about cutting myself from my pain,” which ultimately is cutting himself from his own heart.  

The next level of awareness was for Jack to realize that he had come into embodiment with these patterns of limitation in operation and—like all of us, their defining his life was a guarantee.  In our next conversation, he begins to review his past lives for key memories where his heart had been severed.   He is just as proficient in exploring his greater past as he is his childhood, but the problem remains…he can’t “feel”.   He’s anesthetized himself.   

The first excavated memory flung the door to greater understanding wide open.   Jack had been an altar sacrifice, an infant given to the gods…heart cut out of him while alive.  He matter-of-factly spoke of the moment he jumped free of his body, escaping the trauma of the sharp stone knife ripping into his tiny body ceremoniously placed on a cold stone altar.

Next came the memory where he had been left at an orphanage on the day of birth, put in a crib and forgotten.  He saw himself, day after day, crying his heart out for attention.  Other than basic needs, none came.   To “survive”, he shut down, shut himself away from his pain.  He disassociated again. 

A slew of further life times with the same dynamics followed, enough that he could clearly see the pattern of limitation.  He was programmed to avoid pain, to distance himself from his emotional body with the greatest of will possible.   He was “heart-less.” 

Another exploration had taken him to a memory where he had been part of a gang of ruthless marauders, invading a country, village by village, pillaging, raping, destroying for the sake of destroying.  He had died heart-less—no shame, no remorse, no regret.   Two major aspects of this memory infiltrated his present embodiment.  He could be cutting, cruel and heartless, especially to women.  His arrogance and pompousness masked his deeper sense of humiliation, remorse and worthlessness; he didn’t deserve to have a heart.  Now, Jack was beginning to recognize that investing in the wounded child kept the heartless killer subdued, buried so deep he would never have to deal with him…at least not directly.  This was a Catch-22. 

The only way to freedom, the only way home to his heart was through his pain, through reconnecting to his emotional body.   It was a critical moment…shed six tears.    Like priming a pump, six tears would be ample enough to create an unstoppable flow.   But shedding six tears was a fate worse than death for the egoic self— the self who hangs onto heartlessness (self-imposed limitation) for dear life. 

Jack knew he could not leave his chaotic, self-destructive life until he reconnected to his heart.  He would never be able to know where he stood, never be able to stand in his own knowing. There would be no way for him to live from his heart until he embraced his pain.  Could he do it?  Certainly!  Would he do it?  Yes, for he was dead-serious and totally committed to living from his heart.   And…it was his time.  It was his time to shed the limitations of the physical and stand strong as a pillar of light during these changing times.   What this man was facing was his own death, death of the ego self. 

We talked again.  Jack had shed four of the six tears of his assignment, and that had been with Herculean effort.   He was certain the dam was ready to burst, but was clueless how to move forward.  His frustration was palpable.  The path to awareness typically follows a predictable pattern and requires intuition, using the brilliant mind as a tool for research.   First, present circumstances must be explored; what are the seeming issues at hand.  Then attention must be turned to the childhood, taking the pieces of understanding, like a puzzle, and begin arranging the pieces to obtain a larger, clearer picture of the issues.  The next step is to bring out the earth moving equipment, digging deep, hauling to light core issues born in other times and places.   This is where you get down and dirty--muck around in your greater past and bring up pertinent life times, looking, always looking for patterns of limitation.  This is where the detective comes alive.   This was the stage of the journey Jack was now on.

The subsequent step in excavation is a matter of beginning to look for the “buried treasure”—the heart of the true self.   (The core truth of who we are is buried the most deeply.)   This is the most profound of explorations…like digging to China.  At these depths, Jack found life times where he had lived from his heart, where he had stood in his own knowing, living heart-centered and expansive.   The deeper he dug, the greater the awareness, like bubbles wafting to the surface of water.   Here were lifetimes where he HAD lived from his heart…from his knowing, where intuition had been his guiding force, where he had lived as a pillar of strength and light in his community.   A reliable reference had been unearthed.   Although he could see what it was like to be a man living from his heart, he still couldn’t feel that, however, for he still had to shed those tears. 

A few nights ago, I read SIX TEARS to Jack.  His story!!!  He informed me that tears were welling up, not quite free to flow, but welling up all the same.  Birthing himself could not be rushed.  When the time was right, the tears would come forth like embryonic fluid signaling a birth at hand.  Jack would make it.   As Jack grew stronger in his truth, ego—the protector of limitation— was losing its hold on him. 

The ego must die for an authentic self to be born.  Authentic selves—pillars of light— are most needed now as the winds of change blow through…ever more strongly.   

It’s true for all of us…to return to our heart, heart of our own brilliant mind, to return to “love”, we must dig deep into our own disconnection, delve down through the layers of illusion, starting from our present embodiment, following the thread of separation back to the heart of our own awareness.  (The influence of our past lives over our present embodiment is always complex to say the least.) When we do we will be free…free to bring the best of ourselves to the world.  The time is now to return ourselves to a state of consciousness.  There is no time to delay. 

The phone rang last night.  I could tell by the energy of the ring that it was Jack.  Without a greeting, he announced matter-of-factly that he had just shed 20 tears, then he broke down (broke open) sobbing.  Sobbing! Sobbing!  He was in touch with his pain—shame, worthlessness, self-loathing, pompousness, sadness, loneliness, failure…all were being washed away.  Shortly, he collected himself, gushed out a few words of pure gratitude, and then broke down again.  The floodgates were open, the damn was being drained.  Between bouts of sobbing, he spoke from his heart, spoke with grace and dignity and knowing.  At one point he announced with grave certainty, “There’s a crack in my ego, Ia, where who I am is breaking through.”  

The joy, the heavenly joy surrounding this moment was electric.  Right there, Jack was dying…and in the process he was being born.  He was witnessing his own death and birth simultaneously.  The heavens opened up and the joy of his spirit guides was palpable.   It was a God moment. 

Jack knew he had much more work ahead of him.  He also knew he had the tools to continue on his journey—his heart and his intuition were the master tools.  He would continue to gather pieces to his own life puzzle, gaining more and more clarity as he fit them together.  Nothing could or would stop him.  He was on the road to freedom, on the Heart-Road Home.

A man was complaining to me recently about his roommate waking him early in the morning.  He’s a night person, his roommate a morning person.   I listened to his story. 

Afterward, I plied a few questions:  Didn’t you recently move your bedroom from one room to a room adjacent to the living room?  Weren’t you complaining all last month about how your landlady’s activities wake you up?  Your roommate is waking you up? (personal)  Or his activities are waking you up?  (impersonal)  He’s doing this to you.  (personal)  Or he’s doing this, period?  (impersonal)  What’s actually waking you up?  Is it really your roommate?   Or…is it your own irritation?   Is your irritation just looking to be fed and using your roommate as a sacrifice?  What’s the real issue here?

He wiggled this way and that for a moment, not liking this much food for thought.   He blustered.  He deflected.  He argued.   He defended. 

I asked him to imagine that the next morning he would wake up late.  He would wake up “naturally.”  Where were those irritating roommate sounds?  He would get out of bed curious and confused.  He’d walk to the living room.  No roommate.  He’d check the kitchen.   No roommate.  His concern born, he’d head for his roommate’s bedroom.  There he’d find his roommate dead in his bed.  

Now he could be alright!   Gone was the roommate.  Gone was the irritation.  Done!  Over!  He didn’t have to be irritated anymore. 

The scenario hit home—hit hard enough to bring tears.  He finally realized just how petty he was being, how he was making something personal out of nothing for the mere reason that his irritation—his discontent—needed to be fed.   He recognized that he would miss those tell-tale sounds of a new day dawning that his roommate so faithfully brought forth each morning.   

How many of us relate to life through irritation, frustration, discontent, pettiness—using situations and circumstances to feed our emotional/ego bodies?  And what’s the value?   When we are alright with ourselves then we are alright, period.  Life is critically easier when we are alright with ourselves.   Our “alright” selves feed on nothing other than “all-rightness.”  The world is fine because they are fine.

If ever there was a time to be alright with ourselves, the time is now.    There is no time to project our issues onto the world, to keep feeding our egoic selves.  There is no time for pettiness.  The world is changing in ways that will be/are testing our mettle.  We have a better chance of passing the test, if we can be at peace with ourselves; if we can desist from projecting our issues outward; if we can live from our “alright” selves. 

When you find yourself falling into irritation and such, stop yourself, be honest, own the truth of your discontent...self-assess, self-correct.  Face yourself head-on so that you can begin to self-perfect.  Replace the “you” in your thoughts with “I.”  I (not you) am my problem.   Doing so can make a critical difference in your life…and in the world.   An important something we can bring to the world is our “alright” self.   Within our “alright” self peace abounds.  

Kin, ia

She said that she had begun to grind her teeth 24/7 and that she was planning on seeing a specialist...and...and...  I heard her say, "I'm hanging on by the skin of my teeth."  I pointed out that she might want to examine the issue from her greater awareness to reveal the underlying cause.  Almost flippantly, she said that she knew what it was; She had been thrown out a window in a prior embodiment and had to hang on for dear life.  The woman had recently been focused on major self-healing, which made her life about change—whether or not she was egoically ready, which is always the case.  The ego was using that memory (ego is always using the past to somehow maintain immobilization) to keep the woman hanging on the edge, terrified of letting go, certain that she would be heading in only one direction if she did.  I understood that, in fact, the woman was ready to fly, that she was way ready to step into a new phase of her life, but up against the ego, which was hanging onto her old ways "by the skin of its teeth".  Herein lays the classic struggle.

Of late, I see so much of this life-pushing-us-forward "syndrome," while the ego holds on with amazing resistance.  Another woman was suddenly forced to deal with the fact that her husband was seeing another woman.  This is not good or bad.  It's simply circumstances.  But the woman was "hanging on for dear life" to a situation that was already finished.  While she cried, raged and clung, her husband’s activities were actually her gift.  His choices left her having to address her life at a deep level.  It was clear that it was her time to awaken.  On the other hand, it was clear that, particularly at this advanced stage in the awakening process, the ego would try to exit.  Yes, without question her death wish was palpable.  There was no talking to her about her death wish--for many reasons. As called to do, I took a position of holding a space for her while she went through her "dark night". 

Weeks passed.  Every day I could energetically "feel" her waffling—to stay or to go?  I could see that the body was trying to starve itself to death.  (Isn’t it odd to think that we choose death in order to avoid living?)  It was truly her dark night.  There was no wrong or right in her choosing to stay or leave. 

Last week, she emailed me asking if I could help, that she was not okay.  I responded, saying that she was okay and that I could not help her.  But I could help her help herself if she raise herself out of her emotional body and make a whole-hearted commitment to her healing and growth.  In essence she had to grow up… and make a clear choice whether she was going to remain embodied or exit.  This is a brilliant being, I must say, but a brilliant being with a stubborn and powerful ego—like all of us. 

Ultimately, like the first woman mentioned, she knew that she was here to serve a greater purpose, that she was here to bring something to humanity during these changing times...bring something that is very much needed.  First, she has to "reconnect" to that which she was called to bring. 

I mention two individuals here.  I could mention a host of individuals who are at that critical point, that point of saying, "I'm here for a purpose.  It's my time.  I surrender my games, struggles, suffering, my earthly entrapments and am ready to be used for a greater purpose. 

Tonight, another woman, in the process of exploring from her greater reality, from an outer world, saw that living from the flow rather than from fast-forward was the next step in her personal evolution.  It was essential that she slow down the body.  She claimed she had no idea how to do this.  To slow down, she had to explore just exactly what kept her in fast-forward.  One more time, she visited her childhood to obtain the understanding.   Coming from a dysfunctional family, her fast-forward behavior (obsessive compulsive as she saw) was a means to survive her childhood.  Now, the ego was still using fast-forward to keep her "alive."   Alive being a survival perspective.  She had to let go.  She, too, was hanging on by the skin of her teeth.  She, too, thought she would die if she let go (slowed down in this case).  But it was the holding on that was killing her.  Letting go is death to the ego.  Hanging on is death to the spirit.  

Look around.  You will see someone or another or yourself—many—hanging on by the skin of their teeth.  Our lives as we live them are no longer sustainable.  Without necessary preparation, the winds of change will flatten us.  Like these people mentioned, if it's time to let go, it’s time to let go.  What we don’t know, can’t know, until we let go, is that we will fly and we will have the necessary winds beneath our wings.  In fact, the woman whose husband gifted her so perfectly, claimed when I asked her to tune into her guides, that she was afraid to state how many were there…maybe thousands.  Our guides—our heavenly support system—does not care about our suffering, our fear of letting go of control. They don’t see egos as real.  Winds of change can be a wondrous phenomena when we have the winds of guidance beneath our wings. 

Don't hesitate, for your sake and for humanity's.  Heal!  Let go!  No hanging on by the skin of the teeth.  Time to fly into a new realm of consciousness.  No one who does will "live" to regret it. 

What are you hanging onto by the skin of your teeth?