Healing Fear

I almost don't know what to make of it all. . . the continual changes to my plans, the strange branchings-out and connections. Before I moved here almost two years ago, I'd never heard of Reiki healing, which---miraculously enough----"is not dependent on belief at all and will work whether you believe in it or not." This suits me because I'm slow to believe, even though I'm quite open to possibilities. (I know that sounds contradictory.)

I became curious about Reiki after reading Jane's blog but hadn't had a chance to learn much more personally until this trip to France (that I'd sold my engagement ring to pay for) was canceled. I'd committed to go with a group of women intent on exploring the dark feminine (and various other themes inherent in that, including various beliefs revolving around the probability that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married and had children [Da Vinci Code stuff]----and how that information was suppressed by the Roman Church, intent on subjugating women, among other things)----all interesting themes that seemed to speak to my own feelings of having been silenced, so I thought I was somehow "meant" to go. So much for that.

However, when I got my money back from the woman who'd canceled that trip, she gave me someone else's name and told me that I might be interested in participating in a small workshop in Chartres Cathedral for a week---called "Healing Bodies, Healing Fear"----and after several other doors closed (including my looking at other possible tours), I decided to connect with the woman leading this group and make this a part of what has turned out to be my self-guided tour of France. And she's a healing touch practitioner (similar to Reiki) who actually performed a healing session for me while I sat in her living room, since I mentioned to her my most recent (annually occurring) breast cancer scare. I told her I don't believe I have cancer, and after the treatment, she agreed----so that felt good. (I'll still go back to have the radiologist confirm it with a sonogram.)

I grew up hearing stories of how my mother resented giving up her ideas of how she might have lived her life, so I vowed never to do this myself. However, fear is sticky and sometimes disguises itself as "practicality" or as "safety" or even as statements like "I wasn't meant to do" whatever.

Here in this time of wondering how to live my life, I am intent on pushing against the barriers of who I pictured I once was in order to become who I am. . . and FEAR will not hold me back.

Shifting

How strange to think I know myself in a basic way and then to find myself shifting in ways that are contrary to the stories I've told myself ABOUT myself before. . .

That is, I have always called myself a "loner," yet in the (almost two years) since I've moved, I've reached out to others with a constancy that is rather shocking to my formerly isolated self. In fact, someone told me that my "transparency" disturbed her.

Until recently, I have tried not to reveal myself, I have remained quiet, believing (as I'd learned from Carlos Castenada's Don Juan when I was a teenager) that those who tell their histories to others allow themselves to be trapped by others' judgments. Rather than freeing me, this idea actually kept me pent up and too-conscious of what others may or may not be thinking.

How freeing it is to simply say to oneself, "I am not responsible for what others think about me. All I can do is attempt to live and be as wholly myself as possible, trusting that I am unfolding and becoming who I am meant to become. . . always learning, always finding bits and pieces burned away, then regrown."

Dreaming

After writing about thinking of "building walls and barriers" to protect myself from unwanted conversations from strangers while enjoying my front yard, I dreamed I was swinging from the top of one narrow wall to another (from a trapeze connected somewhere in the sky), trying to find balance and stay safe from a coming flood.

I only now recognized the relationship between my thoughts and dream, coming back to this electronic space, wondering whether anything was happening here.

And so, in my continuing questioning of what is private and what is public, I wonder whether this sort of writing should remain private or whether it has a place in a public realm.

Town Life from My Front Yard

I've rarely lived in town over the course of my life thus far, and it's a challenge for someone who's mostly a loner (and frequently a curmudgeon), who prefers the company of a book to small talk and a walk in the woods or through a field and along a creek to shopping. We're still in the Wet Season here in northern coastal California, so on the rare occasions when the sun appears, almost everyone shows up outside, as I did yesterday, chopping around with my hoe, attempting to free flowers and vegetables from some of the choking weeds.

And so as I looked up to see a man walking on the street toward me with a big grin on his face, my own face grinned in response, but unfortunately this served as sufficient invitation to a visit from someone who (apparently) knows no boundaries because he proceeded to ask me about how much we paid for our house ("We don't talk about that") and to chatter on nonsensically before finally wandering away, talking loudly to himself (since I was no longer paying attention). I'd prefer not to believe the fellow was hopped up on meth (an unfortunate problem of our area) and instead is merely eccentric, but. . . this is why I don't like to spend any time in the front yard.

Instead, I dream of creating walls and barriers.

Not five minutes later, an 11- or 12-year-old boy appeared, introducing himself as our new neighbor, and asking whether he could help me (for a price, of course), and whether we have any fruit trees. I told him our apple trees are still young but that when they begin to produce enough apples to share, we would, and I suggested that he talk to his parents about planting one in their yard, too. (I bit back a wicked impulse to tell him we have cameras and motion detectors focused on those trees 24 hours a day.) He was polite and easy enough to talk to (with his shyer friend standing a bit behind him), and after he left, I began to see myself from his youthful perspective, wondering whether one day he might remember living on this street, talking to the lady who lived up the street about growing apples, and whether he'd remember her as kind; if so, I'm sure he'll also remember me as old.

Observing all these differing perspectives is what happens when I'm around people, whereas when I'm observing nature, I can simply watch and be.

Out to St. George Reef Lighthouse

Lighthouses have always fascinated me----for all the obvious, Romantic reasons, and then for more personal ones (like my grandfather's having been a seafaring man)----and so when we had a chance to benefit the folks who are working to restore the St. George Reef Lighthouse, located about 7 miles off the coast near where we live, by our buying a helicopter trip out for a too-short tour of less than two hours, we jumped at the chance. Opportunities don't come often or easily: the tour is only available on weekends that the weather permits and only from November through mid-April (today's was the last for this year) to spare the endangered stellar sea lions the noise and bother of us humans.

I may post a few other photos of Jon's later----he has the high-powered camera----but here are some I took today.

Links and Connections

Since I stepped away from this blog, questioning the value of the time I was spending with this metal box, I've come across several reasons to continue, but within limits. Reading this piece and watching the fascinating short film at the bottom of the page on the "social media revolution" reminded me, however, of the value of technology, too.

Of course, I still get angry with its too-quick obsolescence, with people who spend more time staring at screens (small and large) than they do at nature or their loved ones----and I don't want to be one of those, but I cannot deny that I enjoy the connections I've found via technology, as long as my more immediate and personal life with those around me here does not suffer.

Because one thing so easily leads to another. . .